Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 5
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Intuition, faith, and the three models of maturation
- Faith as a factual claim and the toolboxes of justification
- Blurring the dichotomy between cognition and thought, and justifying scientific generalization
- The shared path of science and theology, and the difference of falsifiability
- Uncertainty, intuition as weight rather than fundamentalism, and the price of certainty
- A doubtful believer, extreme prices, and Hasid Yaavetz
- Wagering in faith, decision thresholds, and a prayer quorum
- The roadmap to faith and the debate over evolution
- Pascal’s wager and the probabilistic critique of expected value in a one-time trial
- The prisoner’s dilemma, the categorical imperative, and sirens and income tax
- Kant’s three proofs and the ranking by factual foundation
- Different gods, revelatory proofs, and Occam’s razor
Summary
General Overview
The text lays out three possible outcomes of maturation—relativistic skepticism, fundamentalism, and a synthetic maturity that accepts claims without demanding certainty—and argues that the only way out that is neither skeptical nor fundamentalist is to adopt trust in intuition as an intellectual faculty situated between cognition and thought. It defines faith as that same trust in intuition, which makes it possible to accept basic assumptions both behind logical arguments and behind scientific generalizations; therefore, one cannot dismiss claims merely because they came from intuition. It builds a framework in which ways of arriving at faith rely on a combination of observations and a priori principles, demonstrates this through the physico-theological proof and the law of gravitation, and emphasizes that the difference between science and theology lies in the test of falsifiability. It analyzes doubtful faith as a practical choice resembling a wager and raises moral considerations about extreme costs, attacks admiration for self-sacrifice that stems from stupidity, and proposes a map of seven routes to faith. It rejects Pascal’s wager not because the expected-value calculation is wrong, but because expected value is not a rational guide for a one-time decision when the probability is tiny. It then presents Kant’s three routes and the claim that each route produces a differently defined “God,” with the possibility of unifying the attributes through Occam’s razor.
Intuition, faith, and the three models of maturation
The text describes three possible outcomes of maturation: a relativistic skeptic who adopts “everyone has his own truth,” a fundamentalist who holds an absolute truth supposedly coming from “above reason,” and a person with synthetic maturity who accepts claims that common sense endorses even without certainty. It argues that the answer to the question “so what, then?” is adopting trust in intuition as an intellectual faculty that stands between cognition and thought, linking this to “Kant’s synthetic a priori.” It identifies this faculty with what is called faith, and defines faith as willingness to accept something without a logical argument leading to it, because even a logical argument rests on assumptions that are not themselves logically justified. It concludes that there is no way to escape intuition except through absolute skepticism that gives up accepting any information about the world.
Faith as a factual claim and the toolboxes of justification
The text states that faith is a factual claim: “I believe that God exists” means “God exists,” and a factual claim requires justification if one expects others to accept it or if one stands behind it. It proposes two toolboxes of justification: an empirical-scientific observational toolbox and an a priori logical-philosophical toolbox, and rejects appeals to “above reason.” It argues that the logical-philosophical toolbox alone cannot supply facts about the world, because the world “doesn’t owe me anything, as Mark Twain said,” and observation alone cannot lead to God because the claim is not scientifically testable, nor even falsifiable in Popper’s sense. It presents the “tangle” in which neither toolbox can by itself “do the job” of grounding the claim that God exists.
Blurring the dichotomy between cognition and thought, and justifying scientific generalization
The text argues that the dichotomy between observation and thought is not sharp, because even what we call “reason” includes an observational component, and the inductive component does not arise from observations alone. It demonstrates this through Hume’s problem of induction and the move from observed laws to the law of gravitation, asking how we know that “all objects with mass” are included, and not only the ones actually observed. It argues that one “sees the law of gravitation” not with the eyes but “with the eyes of the mind,” thereby placing a cognitive function inside thought itself. It cites frameworks such as “the eyes of the mind” in Maimonides, “auditory logic” in the Nazir, and “eidetic seeing” in Husserl to describe a kind of contemplation that is neither mere sensory perception nor pure philosophy detached from the world.
The shared path of science and theology, and the difference of falsifiability
The text states that the path to conclusions about God and about a scientific theory rests on a combination of observations with philosophical analysis, which itself relies on intuition as a basic trust. It presents the example of the physico-theological proof: from the observation that the world is complex, together with the philosophical assumption that a complex thing does not arise on its own, one arrives at the conclusion that there is someone who made it, and that “that thing we arrived at is what I call God.” It adds the claim that “complexity has an objective definition… in physics it’s called entropy,” and that the observational direction by itself does not yield the general principle. In parallel it demonstrates the law of gravitation as a product of observations together with a philosophical principle like Occam’s razor, and then sharpens the point that the only difference is that the law of gravitation can be subjected to a falsification test, whereas the claim “God exists” cannot be subjected to a falsifying experiment.
Uncertainty, intuition as weight rather than fundamentalism, and the price of certainty
The text states that accumulating information is done “at a price, at the price of certainty,” and therefore conclusions are not certain. It opposes becoming an “intuition fundamentalist” who gives up critical thought. It emphasizes that accepting intuition as a reliable faculty does not mean accepting every intuition, because intuition can mislead, and compares this to sight: seeing from a distance does not deserve the same trust as seeing up close, and a mirage is an illusion. It concludes that anyone who is not a skeptic must assign some weight to intuition, but still has to discuss “how do you test intuitions,” and argues that this is done more by rhetorical means than by logical ones.
A doubtful believer, extreme prices, and Hasid Yaavetz
The text argues that when uncertain faith demands extreme steps such as “giving up your life” or “taking someone else’s life,” a person is entitled to say that he is not sufficiently sure to pay such a price, and defines this as legitimate and even as part of one’s duty of “self-accounting.” It states that doubt may concern not only God’s existence, but also whether God commanded a particular thing, or whether the interpretation and application are correct. It brings a myth about Hasid Yaavetz, whom “they love very much in Bnei Brak,” according to which ordinary householders stood firm in the test of the expulsion from Spain while Torah scholars pulled “little tricks,” and it rejects admiration for self-sacrifice that stems from stupidity. It argues that cults too display extreme self-sacrifice and have even “blown themselves up in masses,” and therefore self-sacrifice as such is not a criterion for esteem.
Wagering in faith, decision thresholds, and a prayer quorum
The text draws a distinction between one’s level of conviction (“sixty percent, seventy percent”) and the practical decision whether that is “good enough” to count as a believer, and argues that the decisive factor is the decision, not the percentages themselves. It states that two people can both hold “seventy percent” and yet one will decide that he believes and the other that he does not, depending on costs, perfectionism, and one’s appetite for risk. He says, “I wouldn’t count the first one toward a prayer quorum, and the second one I would,” and adds that the assumption that someone who does not believe does not count toward a prayer quorum is something that ought to be said explicitly, even though “people tend to think otherwise, including halakhic decisors. Absurd.” He compares this to stock-market investments and the question of one’s “risk level,” and argues that one cannot provide a sharp mechanism for fixing the percentages, because in the end one is left with what “seems right to you.”
The roadmap to faith and the debate over evolution
The text proposes “seven ways to arrive at faith”: Pascal’s wager, Kant’s three ways (the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological), direct intuition, theological/revelatory proofs, and tradition. It argues that direct intuition is not a weak “simple faith,” but the same phenomenon as arguments that rest on intuitive assumptions; the only question is whether such an intuition actually exists. It criticizes the common dichotomy in the faith-evolution debate and argues that even if evolution refutes the physico-theological proof, this would not refute faith in God, because one can arrive at it by other routes. It illustrates this with a mistake in a proof of the sum of the angles in a triangle: the collapse of a proof does not collapse the theorem itself, and adds that “to claim there is no God… you have to refute all the ways of getting to Him.”
Pascal’s wager and the probabilistic critique of expected value in a one-time trial
The text presents Pascal’s wager as an expected-value argument: faith yields infinite happiness if God exists and a negligible loss if He does not, while unbelief risks “minus infinity” if God exists and a negligible gain if He does not, so apparently the probabilities do not matter. It presents familiar objections such as the multiplicity of gods and Dawkins’s claim that belief cannot be adopted for reasons of utility, and then argues that the decisive objection is different: expected value is not a rational guide for a one-time decision when the probability is tiny. It illustrates this with a lottery in which the chance is one in a billion to win an enormous sum, and yet “I wouldn’t pay ten shekels,” explaining that the average is not the likely result, and that people confuse expected value with the actual probability of receiving it. It invokes the St. Petersburg paradox, where the expected value is infinite yet a rational person would not pay large sums, and concludes that Pascal’s wager fails as a decision criterion because it relies on expected value in a context where “the chance of reaching the expected value is negligible.”
The prisoner’s dilemma, the categorical imperative, and sirens and income tax
The text links the prisoner’s dilemma to Kant’s categorical imperative and argues that they are “the same thing,” illustrating this through public questions in which individual calculation maximizes profit but collective failure produces disaster. It argues that fear of missiles is “psychology” and that “someone who is afraid is simply not a rational person,” but entering a protected space is rational behavior because if everyone refrained from doing so, “someone would get hurt.” It brings a halakhic question about activating an electric lock on the Sabbath during a siren and argues that for an individual, “absolutely not,” because “there is no danger whatsoever,” but if “the whole world would get stuck outside,” then yes, because of the public consideration. It similarly illustrates the point with voting and tax evasion, and argues that the prohibition derives from categorical universalization, not from the measurable effect of a single individual act.
Kant’s three proofs and the ranking by factual foundation
The text details Kant’s three routes according to the extent of their factual foundation: the ontological proof starts from “zero facts” and tries to prove God’s existence from conceptual analysis; the cosmological proof starts from the minimal fact that “there is something”; and the physico-theological proof starts from richer facts such as complexity and design. It notes that Bertrand Russell said that “it is much easier to mock the ontological proof than to put your finger on where the problem is,” and presents Descartes’ cogito as another example of an ontological move. It states that the distinction between the routes lies both in their point of departure, in the a priori principles added, and in the character of the conclusion.
Different gods, revelatory proofs, and Occam’s razor
The text argues that each route yields a “different conclusion” and proves the existence of a different object: in Anselm’s ontological proof it is “the perfect being”; in the cosmological proof it is “the creator” who produced “something from nothing”; and in the physico-theological proof it is an intelligent “engineer”-like entity that explains complexity. It adds a kind of “theological argument or revelatory argument,” illustrated by the claim that binding morality is impossible in a world without God, so the conclusion is “the moral legislator.” It states that “tell me the route by which you got to God and I’ll tell you who the God is that you got to,” and emphasizes that these are philosophical gods that do not by themselves imply the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It suggests that if one accepts several proofs together, one can unify the attributes into one being through Occam’s razor, and finally sets a future goal of moving from the deistic-philosophical God to “God in the religious, theistic sense.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time I spoke a bit about the meaning of intuition. I described the process of maturation as a process that ultimately leaves us with three possible outcomes. One possibility is to come out a skeptic, a relativist—everyone has his own truth, his own narrative, and so on. A second possibility is to come out a fundamentalist, meaning to think that you’re holding some absolute truth in your hand, whose source is something lofty, I don’t know, above reason, or things like that. Statements about what is above reason are usually below it. And the third thing is synthetic maturity. Synthetic maturity basically means: I accept things that my common sense tells me, even though I don’t have certainty about them. In other words, I do not demand certainty in order for something to be acceptable.
And then the question came up: fine, so what then? I can always declare that I accept something false as true; that doesn’t really solve the problem. And what I wanted to argue is that the only possible solution to this problem is to adopt trust in intuition. That is, to treat our intuition as some intellectual faculty that lies somewhere between cognition and thought. I spoke about Kant’s synthetic a priori. And the claim ultimately is that the only way we can trust information that we accumulate not by direct observation—say, a scientific theory or a theological one, meaning the existence of God as well as anything else—is only if we assume that intuition is some faculty worthy of trust, that you can place trust in our intuition. And my claim was that intuition is basically an intellectual faculty. And this intellectual faculty—so it seems to me—is what is called faith.
And therefore faith is not connected specifically to matters of the Holy One, blessed be He, to theological matters. Faith is being willing to accept something even though I don’t have some logical argument that leads to it. Now as I said, there is no alternative, because even if there is a logical argument that leads to it, that argument has premises. And why should I accept those premises if I have no argument that leads to them? So necessarily, even if I accept things on the basis of a logical argument, in the background there are always premises that I accept not by the force of a logical argument. Therefore there is no way to escape intuition. The only way to escape it is simply to be a skeptic, to say okay, then indeed nothing is true, I accept nothing.
But if you are willing to accept some information about the world, scientific or non-scientific, any information about the world, then you are implicitly assuming some trust in intuition. And therefore if someone now comes and says to you, look, my intuition also tells me that God exists, this faculty that I call faith or intuition basically leads me to the conclusion that God exists—you can no longer claim: look, these are hallucinations. You can say I disagree, my intuition doesn’t say that, but you cannot dismiss it simply because the tool by which I arrived at it was intuition. Because if you do not accept that, then you are not supposed to accept anything.
Okay, so right now I’m speaking only about a categorical rejection of everything produced by intuition. Someone who doesn’t reject it categorically—that still doesn’t mean he believes in God. It only means that now we have to begin discussing whether the intuition regarding the existence of God is in fact reasonable or unreasonable, how one tests intuitions. And I spoke about how this is done more through rhetorical means than through logical means.
Why was this whole move important? Because let me remind you of the background from which I set out on this move. We came to the conclusion that faith is a factual claim. “I believe that God exists” means I am making a factual claim: God exists. Okay? A factual claim needs justification. Experiences—fine, I have experiences; if I have the experience, then I have the experience. No one is supposed to argue with me about whether I had an experience. But if I make a claim about the world, then there should be something on which I base it. Of course I can always move my lips and make all kinds of claims about the world, but if I make a claim that I’m also prepared to stand behind, or if I demand that others accept it as well, then that means I have some basis for it.
Now what kind of basis can I have? So I said there are two toolboxes that, at least in principle, one can use. The empirical-scientific toolbox, meaning the observational one, and the a priori logical-philosophical toolbox. Okay? And so there is nothing else; “above reason” I’m leaving aside, yes? So there is nothing else. These are the two toolboxes we have.
Now the problem was that neither one can do the job. Because the logical-philosophical toolbox, apparently, cannot give me facts about the world. So my mind is built in a certain way, or my thinking is structured in a certain way—so what? The world doesn’t owe me anything, as Mark Twain said, right? Meaning, why should the fact that my philosophy leads me to some conclusion mean that that conclusion really exists in the world? Why should that mean that the conclusion correctly describes what is happening in the world? On the other hand, observation cannot lead me to God, because—well, yes, it cannot lead me to God because this is not an observable thing. You cannot subject the claim that God exists to a scientific test. Not even to a falsification test, in Popper’s sense—not to proof. Falsification: even a scientific theory cannot be proved. But at least it can be subjected to a falsification test. The theory that God exists cannot.
So it turns out that neither the scientific-observational toolbox nor the logical-philosophical toolbox can do the job. So what can? That was the tangle. And what I wanted to do in this whole move about maturation and the three kinds of—yes, the maturation process and the three kinds of mature person, the synthetic one, the fundamentalist one, and the skeptic—was basically to say that this distinction between the two toolboxes is not sharp. The dichotomy I made between the two toolboxes is not sharp.
Even what we call reason has an observational component in it. Yes? When I look at the world and say that all objects with mass attract one another, arriving at the law of gravitation, the facts I observed concerned particular objects. Right? How do I know that all objects with mass do this? I make a generalization. Hume’s problem of induction, right? That was the point of departure of this whole move. Now the fact that I’m used to making inductions, or that I’m built in a way that makes inductions—so what? The world doesn’t owe me anything.
So the claim was that no, I see the law of gravitation. I don’t see it with my eyes; I see it with the eyes of the mind. In my mind I have some faculty, or wing, or function, that is a cognitive function, not a thinking function. Yes? We spoke about cognition as an interaction between me and the world. I draw information from the world by creating some kind of contact. My senses create contact with the world, and that’s how I draw information. Thought is something not connected to the world; it happens inside me. I do some kind of thinking, internal processing, and arrive at whatever conclusions I arrive at.
And this dichotomous description is what created the problem: two toolboxes, neither of them can do the job, so how do we arrive at the conclusion that God exists? As I said before, by exactly the same token you can ask how we arrive at the conclusion that the law of gravitation is correct. It is not fundamentally different. And in order to answer that question positively, both the scientific one and the theological one, we need to accept the assumption that there is no sharp dichotomous relation between those two possibilities. There is a part of the mind that is a cognitive part—a cognition within thought. We spoke about the eyes of the mind in Maimonides, the Nazir’s auditory logic, or Husserl’s eidetic seeing, and so on.
And then what this means is that I can arrive at conclusions about the world not by means of the senses, but this is not pure philosophy either. Because if it is pure philosophy, then it happens in my head; why should the world be bound by what happens in my head? Rather, this is some other kind of contemplation of the world. Not contemplation with the senses, but contemplation through the senses or beyond the senses, if you like—call it a sixth sense, it doesn’t matter what you call it—but that is the only way to explain my ability to arrive at the conclusion that God exists. But again I emphasize: it is also the only way to explain my ability to arrive at a scientific theory. And this is not something unique only to religious thought. Anyone who does not accept this as a reliable faculty, as a faculty worthy of trust, ought to give up a lot of things, not only faith in God.
Okay? So a person has to decide: either you are a skeptic and you accept nothing—no science, no theology, nothing—or, if you are not a skeptic, then you do have to give weight to intuition. Weight does not mean that I accept everything that someone’s intuition says, or even my own, because intuition can also mislead, obviously. I do not want to become a fundamentalist of intuition. Yes? A fundamentalist is someone who does not put things to the test of critical thought. Okay? That is not the point; on the contrary. I want to argue that there is a third tool here that is not fundamentalist, and therefore indeed its conclusions are not certain. Right? Obviously. We spoke about the fact that accumulating information is always done for a price, at the price of certainty. If I want to accumulate information, I have to pay in the currency of certainty.
So that is the general framework. We basically arrive at the conclusion that the way to arrive at faith is through this combined faculty between thought and cognition, what I called intuition or faith or whatever you want to call it. This basically means: it is a philosophical argument that can also be based on observations, but the observations themselves are not enough to bring me to the conclusion that God exists. I need to do some additional philosophical analysis of the observations, with the assumption that the philosophical analysis is not merely an act of thought, because otherwise it’s just observations plus thought, and that should not bring me to God. Rather, there is here some kind of contemplation of what these observations are saying, what the broader meaning is, what theory underlies them. And then I can indeed arrive at the conclusion that God exists.
And therefore the claim is that I need to use philosophical tools that can rest, at the beginning of the way, on observations. I’ll give just one example so that it will be clear what I mean. The most common proof—and we’ll deal with it at length—is the physico-theological proof for the existence of God. That is Kant’s terminology; we’ll come back to it. I’m just jumping ahead for a moment to illustrate. The physico-theological proof basically says: the world is highly complex; a complex thing does not just arise on its own in some arbitrary or accidental way; therefore it is clear that someone made it. That someone is called God, whatever divinity means. That’s the simplest formulation I can give right now. We’ll still talk about this and objections and everything; I’m only illustrating at the moment.
Let’s try to think what we did here in terms of the two toolboxes. We started with the claim that the world is complex. What is that? That’s observational, right? You can see that there is complexity in the world. By the way, complexity—and we’ll talk about that too—has an objective definition, contrary to what you’ll find on every atheist website telling you no, complexity is in the eye of the beholder. That’s nonsense. Complexity has an objective definition; in physics it’s called entropy. Low entropy means complexity.
The second thing: after I arrive at the conclusion that the world is complex, I have some assumption—something complex does not arise by itself. Where does that assumption come from? Someone might say maybe that too is observational; we see how things come into being, and complex things just don’t arise on their own. You could say that, but it’s not enough. Even if our experience gives us some direction, some insight, in that direction, it’s still not enough. Clearly this general principle does not come out of observation. There is some common sense here, some conception that says that a complex thing does not create itself.
So here is the philosophy. We begin with a collection of observations showing us that the world is complex—that is one foundation. On top of that I activate a tool of philosophical analysis that says a complex thing is not created by itself, and together those two yield the conclusion that apparently there is something that assembled this world, and that is God. I call it God; the statement that it is God is not itself a proposition—it’s a definition. In other words, the thing we arrived at is what I call God.
This is an illustration of the necessary combination—and it is not accidental—the necessary combination between observational tools and logical-philosophical analysis, and only the two together can bring me to the conclusion that God exists. But only the two together can also bring me to the conclusion that there is a law of gravitation. That conclusion is not unique to God. Regarding the law of gravitation, I could do the same thing, right? There are various objects that attract one another; the only thing I found in common between them is that they have mass. I have an assumption—Occam’s razor—that generally, if a phenomenon has an explanation that reduces it to one principle, that is preferable to any more complicated explanation. So I attribute all the phenomena I saw to mass, because that is the only common feature possessed by all the objects I observed. And if so, then my conclusion is that all objects with mass attract one another.
Again, notice: there is an initial observational component here—I see many objects attracting one another—but the generalization I make is on the basis of a principle I brought from home, Occam’s razor or some other philosophical principle, and in the end the conclusion is the combination of both.
So what nevertheless distinguishes the conclusion about the law of gravitation from the conclusion that God exists? I’ll speak about this too, but just so you can see the picture: up to this point it’s exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Meaning, I don’t think there is any serious way to challenge this form of reasoning. Anyone who accepts scientific reasoning has to accept this form of reasoning as well. The only difference is that with the scientific conclusion—the law of gravitation—you can subject it to a falsification test. After I arrive at the conclusion that every two objects with mass attract one another, I can try to conduct experiments and check whether it works or doesn’t work. And if I discover that in certain cases it doesn’t work, then I have falsified that conclusion.
In that sense, the scientific conclusion has an advantage over the theological conclusion, because I have no way to do an experiment that would subject the conclusion that God exists to a falsification test. Right? There is no way to do that. Therefore the route by which we arrive at the conclusion is the same for the law of gravitation and for faith in God. What differs is the product of that route, because the scientific product can then be subjected to falsification tests. The theological product cannot.
All right? So we’ll come back to that point, but that is the full picture. In fact, here I have laid out the whole framework. Everything we do from here on will be within this framework. Okay? And everything we do from here on, you’ll see, is simply to look at which observations we rely on, which a priori principles we add, and where that leads us. And now all the routes we discuss regarding the existence of God are distinguished from one another simply by those parameters. Maybe they involve different observations, maybe different a priori principles, or a different character of conclusion. But all the ways of arriving at the existence of God travel along this route.
By the way, when I talk about different observations, there will be at least one route that relies on zero observations—no observations at all: the ontological proof. That is an extreme case. But at the principled level, I’m saying that every one of the routes I’ll sketch over the course of the year can be described on the general map I’ve just drawn. We begin with some facts; we learn those facts through observation. We then process those facts with philosophical principles, assumptions of plausibility of one kind or another—call it intuition, yes, or faith if you like. And then the conclusion is that there is a factual result about the world: God exists.
Now what is God? That may vary among the different routes. How do we define Him? Whose existence did we prove? Okay? How is He defined? In each route He will be defined differently. But all these routes—and we’ll see it—in each one I’ll want to sharpen what the factual foundation is from which I start, what philosophical assumptions I add, and what conclusion that leads me to. That is what will unify all the routes I’m going to discuss.
One more remark before I enter the routes themselves, and with this I’ll finish the introduction to this series. I said that the existence of God is a claim—every claim, really, but the existence of God too—is an uncertain claim. There is no way to be certain of it. Unless you’re a fundamentalist, in which case I think you’re deluding yourself. There is really no way to arrive at certainty about anything, and certainly not about the existence of God. Not even about the claim that there is no certainty about anything.
So how should we relate to these intermediate believers—someone who believes sixty percent, seventy percent, eighty percent, thirty percent? Well, when I get to the physico-theological proof we’ll discuss everything at length. Here I only brought it in to illustrate the structure. I’m not going into the details of the argument; it still needs to be sharpened and polished, there are objections, and we’ll still have to deal with them. There’s a lot to do here, but step by step.
So the question is how to relate to a doubtful believer. Okay? So look, first of all I want to say something that is apparently almost a necessary consequence of what I’ve said until now. In a place where my faith leads me to the conclusion that I need to do something very, very extreme, something with very heavy costs—whether to give up my life, or to take someone else’s life, or things of that kind—the moment I understand that faith is not certain, a problematic opening appears. I can say: listen, I’m not sufficiently sure to take such a radical step on the basis of my faith. Even though it may be that this is what faith says, or what Jewish law says in the Jewish case, but since I’m not sure, a person always has to weigh the matter. When something I’m not sure about demands that I do something very, very extreme, it may be that I won’t do it because I’m not sure.
And many times that is very frightening to people, beyond the fact that they think faith is supposed to involve certainty and so on—which is some kind of example, I don’t know where it came from—but beyond that there really is some threat here to the degree of your commitment or loyalty to the system. Because if you’re not certain that it’s true, there are sometimes things that demand heavy prices from us, and the question is whether we are prepared to pay those prices when we are not sure.
So first of all, that’s true. At the level of principle, each person needs to do his own soul-searching and see how certain he is, how heavy the price really is, and whether he is sufficiently certain to take such an extreme step. And someone who does not take it—in my view that is a completely legitimate step. Meaning, that is his consideration, that is what he is supposed to do. It is not a failure, it does not mean he is weak. That is the conclusion he ought to draw. On the contrary, someone who does not draw that conclusion is sinning, because in the end he really should have done his own reckoning.
By the way, the doubt can be about whether God exists, but it can also be about whether God commanded this even if He does exist, because maybe this is a mistaken interpretation—mine, the sages’, I don’t know whose. Who says this is the correct interpretation? Who says this is the correct application to the situation before me? There are many places where doubt can enter. And all these doubts together can undermine my commitment to do those things.
You know, I’ll perhaps mention here—since I referred to Hasid Yaavetz—a myth that they really love in Bnei Brak, where Hasid Yaavetz says that the householders were the ones who stood the test best in the exile of the expulsion from Spain, while the Torah scholars pulled little tricks. Fine—they split hairs, made formal distinctions, found things they could do from the standpoint of Jewish law. The householders didn’t: no sophistication, if it’s forbidden then it’s forbidden, they go with it all the way, and if necessary they go into exile. They stood the test. And from this comes a kind of admiration for simple householders, admiration for the unlearned masses. Really a fascinating phenomenon.
And I say: I do not admire the householders in any way. The householders are foolish. I mean, why should I admire them? The fact that they gave up their lives because they were idiots—is that supposed to make me admire them? It means they were idiots. I’m saying: if the way out found by the Torah scholars was wrong, that’s another matter. But if they really know there is a way out and they use it, then fine, what’s the problem? That’s perfectly okay.
And more than that I say—now I’m not speaking about Torah scholars in the sense of people who know Jewish law, but in the sense of philosophers, people who understand that nothing is certain. I do not give up my life so quickly over something that I’m not one hundred percent sure is true. That too is a consideration that a wise person will make and a foolish person will not be aware of. And superficially the foolish person has more self-sacrifice, while the wise person has less self-sacrifice. And many times we tend to value more the one who has more self-sacrifice, and I do not value him more. I do not value him more unless it is genuinely more self-sacrifice. But if it stems not from greater self-sacrifice, but from greater stupidity—because he thinks it’s certain when the truth is that it isn’t certain—then he is more foolish, not more self-sacrificing.
Okay? Every cult has extraordinary self-sacrifice. People in cults have blown themselves up in masses. So do I admire that? No, I don’t admire that. I don’t admire it because they entered some kind of—I don’t know what to call it—psychosis and decided that they needed to blow themselves up. They were foolish enough to do that. So—
[Speaker E] Therefore,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so, yes. Look, we can see it with our own eyes. I mean, people—I don’t know—fight in the army; leave aside the religious aspects, they risk their lives, sometimes at very, very high risk in certain situations. What, are you sure you’re right? Are you sure that without you this battle won’t be decided? Are you sure the Arabs aren’t right? I don’t know what. I’m not sure of anything. I think not, I think I’m right, but I think so—I don’t know. Maybe not, maybe there’s another narrative. Okay? Fine, but it’s strong enough for me to go with it. You can definitely get to that point. But a person has to do some soul-searching and see whether he’s really there. And the difference between this and that is not always that this one involves more self-sacrifice and that one less. Sometimes this is more foolish and that less foolish—or less smart and more smart, a gentler way to put it. So that’s the first point.
Second point: how does this actually happen in the end? Look, the difference between someone who decides to sacrifice himself and someone who doesn’t, beyond foolishness—and let’s say both people reach the conclusion that it’s 80 percent—but one of them will decide to sacrifice himself and the other won’t. What’s the difference between them? I think—and this is a subtle point—the difference between them… I perhaps sent this in a column on my website that deals with this, column 660. Whoever wants can look there. I don’t really have a way to send it now; there’s no WhatsApp here.
In that column I talk about the relationship between a wager and faith. What does that mean? I come to a certain conclusion, and in my eyes that conclusion is correct—I don’t know—at 80 percent. Just roughly; you can’t really quantify things like that, but let’s say I represent it with some number: 0.8, 80 percent. Okay? Now there’s one person for whom 80 percent is good enough to go with it. Another person says no—for something like this I need a higher probability, or greater plausibility. Why, for example? Because it could be that for different people the cost is measured differently. The cost for you of living a life committed to Jewish law, and the cost for someone else—it may be that for you it demands more of you, it’s a higher price, it’s harder for you, and for someone else it isn’t. For example. Or just, sometimes even just in deciding what’s right and what isn’t, there’s a person who’s more of a perfectionist; he isn’t willing to make decisions on the basis of 80 percent, only if it’s 90 percent. And another person is less perfectionistic; his threshold is lower.
And I’m not dismissing these things at all. These aren’t arbitrary things. I don’t see this as some kind of lottery. There can be a person who holds at 70 percent and does not believe, and there can be a person who holds at 70 percent and does believe. The first one I would not count for a prayer quorum, and the second one I would. Because the second one decided that for him 70 percent is enough, and from his standpoint he is a believing person; he reached that conclusion. He knows it’s only 70 percent. It’s not that he now says, “Ah, I forgot it was 70 percent; from now on it’s 100 percent.” No. He knows it’s 70 percent; he just decided that for him 70 percent is enough. Okay? Someone else says no—from my standpoint 70 percent is not enough. A legitimate position. Meaning, he can say, listen, for something this significant, 70 percent is not enough. I’m not willing to do it.
So he’s a person who, even though he believes at the same level as the second one—both at 70 percent—this one won’t count for the prayer quorum and that one will. Yes, the assumption is that someone who doesn’t believe doesn’t count for a prayer quorum. Yes, that’s something I perhaps should have added, because for some reason people are accustomed to think otherwise, even halakhic decisors. Absurd.
Anyway, so this point—that there is some kind of wager in faith—but there’s a wager in everything. There’s a wager even in the law of gravity. The wager means: do I place trust in the intuition that led me there, in the level of intuition that led me there, or not? Now there are different levels of intuition. There are intuitions that will give me plausibility of 60, 70, 80, 90 percent. A lot of things—there are many things that come with intuition. Some of them I believe more, some less. Intuition is not a uniform tool. It’s like when I see: sometimes I see something very clearly; something far away I see less well, right? I perceive both things with my eyes, but that doesn’t mean I have the same confidence in both pictures. In that picture that’s far away, I’m more inclined to doubt what my eyes are showing me, because maybe I missed something because it’s far away. In something close, I trust my eyes more. So that’s a good analogy for talking about intuition too.
I said earlier that someone who, in principle, doesn’t accept the validity of intuition often attacks faith in God. I ask him, one second, what about the law of gravity? That too is based on intuition. And then in fact he can say: you’re right, in principle I do accept intu… intuition as a cognitive tool, a thinking tool, or a valid, reliable tool—but there are different intuitions. Here my intuition says 90 percent; here my intuition says 40 percent. So this I accept, and that I don’t accept, even though both things are products of intuition. Okay? Exactly like sight can give me an image whose plausibility, whose reliability, is 80 percent, and an image whose reliability is 50 percent—and there’s even a mirage, which is a complete illusion. Okay? So intuition is the same way.
And therefore there are different intuitions. The fact that I accept intuition doesn’t mean that everything that comes from intuition I automatically accept. It only means that you can’t dismiss it out of hand because it came from intuition. That’s not legitimate. So what, then? Okay, you have to discuss to what degree I was persuaded in this matter. So therefore there is some dimension of wagering in our decision-making. When have we reached a certain level of plausibility? But that’s not enough. We also need to decide what level of plausibility is required for me to adopt this claim. Some kind of thing that’s like a wager, okay? But it’s a very important step, because it’s the step that in the end turns us from non-believers into believers, or the reverse. The decision, not the percentages. Someone else who, with the same percentages, reaches the same conclusion at the same percentage level that God exists, but didn’t make the decision—then he doesn’t believe, even though it’s the same percentage level. It’s a subtle point, but in my eyes it’s important.
Okay. There’s a theological question—I have a few more theological questions about Him. What can you do? But it’s in no way related to the question of whether God exists. Because if I’ve reached that conclusion on the basis of a certain argument that God exists, then from that point on, if I have difficulties with how He runs the world—fine, that requires analysis. I don’t know; maybe there are things I don’t understand. I’m saying, you can offer some answers. I’m deliberately not getting into that because I don’t think it changes anything essential. Okay? You can of course argue about the answers too.
All right, so I’ll get to faith and wager in a moment with Pascal—you can’t escape him—but before I get to him I want to give some general map of where we’re going over the course of the year. How do you determine the percentages? Everyone with his own mechanism; I don’t know. How do you determine percentages at all before the question whether you accept that percentage level or not? How do you determine that it’s 60 percent? I don’t know—your intuition says this is very plausible, this is less plausible, this is not plausible. I don’t know. It’s like if I ask you what the mechanism of sight is. I don’t know. Sometimes vision is blurry, sometimes it isn’t. Right? Okay. If I asked you what the mechanism is, then you’d ask me what the mechanism of the mechanism is. In the end you’re always left with something you accept because that’s what seems right to you. To some extent. Okay. And I also said: to some extent it’s like a wager. But in the stock market too it’s like a wager. But you have an intuition about what to invest in, roughly. Of course. But one person with 70 percent won’t invest, and another person with 70 percent will invest. That’s called risk appetite as against risk versus reward. Fine. Someone who deals with investments always asks his clients, yes, what level of risk do you want? There are people who are more conservative, so they don’t want to enter high-risk situations; the profits too will usually be accordingly lower on average. Okay? Whereas someone else who is more willing to take risks will enter more adventurous channels, and of course he has the possibility of earning more. Okay? So it’s a matter of personality, a matter of mindset, I don’t know. There are no rules here. Each person according to how he’s built.
In general I want to say that there are—maybe we can speak of—seven ways of arriving at faith, seven kinds of ways of arriving at faith. Okay? After that, within each such kind there can be different shades of arguments, but seven kinds. The first is Pascal’s wager, which we’ll deal with shortly, apropos wager and faith. There are Kant’s three ways: the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, and the physico-theological proof. In the Critique of Pure Reason he divides them there into three kinds. That makes four. Direct intuition: someone says, “I have an intuition that God exists. I don’t need arguments.” After all, arguments too are based on premises, and premises are the fruit of intuition. Why do I need the whole route? I have an intuition that God exists. I have it directly, yes? What people often call simple faith. I don’t call it simple faith; that’s not a good expression, as though it’s a weaker faith than the faith of those with arguments. Because those with the arguments start from premises that are the fruit of intuition and then derive from them some conclusion, and someone else says: that conclusion itself is my intuition. How is he different? It’s the same thing. The whole question is whether you have that intuition. If yes, everything is fine; if not, then you need to take other things for which you do have intuition and see whether from them you can derive the conclusion that God exists. But there is nothing stronger in that than in this. A point people very often don’t understand.
So we said: Pascal, Kant’s three ways—that’s four; intuition—that’s five; there’s another type of philosophical proofs I’ll speak about. I call them theological or revealing proofs. And there is tradition. People believe tradition in one way or another, and therefore believe that God exists. So you could say these are seven ways of arriving at faith.
Maybe one more remark from the very fact that there are seven ways. I’ll just give you one example, and again, I’ll go into it at length later. The examples here I’m only using to sharpen points in the general structure. There are often debates around evolution and faith. The common denominator of both sides in this debate is that they both agree that it’s dichotomous. Meaning: if you believe in God, then you have to reject evolution; if you believe in evolution, you have to reject God. Right? That’s agreed upon. Now the debate is only over the question what to adopt and what to reject, but both sides agree that you have to choose—either this or that, what’s called xor. So that picture, which both sides agree to, is problematic. Why is it problematic? Because as we’ll see when we talk about evolution and the physico-theological proof, evolution is a refutation of the physico-theological proof. Okay? Right. Accept that for now as a given; it doesn’t matter right now exactly what the words mean. A certain type of proof—evolution is a refutation against it. Okay? What does that mean? Notice what it means. It means that even if I accept intuition—sorry, evolution—and even if I accept the argument that says that if evolution is true then the physico-theological proof has fallen—two things I need to accept—I still do not need to give up belief in God. It could be that my way of arriving at God is one of the other six, and not the physico-theological argument.
It’s like if someone finds—suppose I present you with a proof that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, and you find an error in the proof. Does that obligate you to give up the theorem that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees? No. The theorem may still be true; this just isn’t the proof of that theorem. But there could be another proof. It could be that there is no proof and the theorem is still true. The fact that the proof fell does not mean the conclusion fell. It only means that by this route you will not succeed in getting to… you will not succeed in becoming convinced that God exists. Okay. So you won’t succeed. But there are other ways. In order to claim that there is no God, or even that there is no proof of His existence—which is a weaker claim—you need to refute all the ways of arriving at Him, not just one. And here there is a basic mistake in the debate about evolution, do you see? A basic mistake in the logic of the debate. Because even if everyone is right—and in my opinion they are not right—but even if everyone is right, that does not lead to the conclusion that there is no God. It only says that the physico-theological direction is not the direction that will prove God’s existence. Okay, but there may be other proofs. It may be true even without proofs. Direct intuition, as we spoke about before, or tradition, or whatever it may be.
Even Dawkins, the fanatic, says he cannot say that he doesn’t believe in God. He only says that the chance is very low that God exists. Meaning, he’s an agnostic. He divides it into seven levels, and he’s at number six. Seven is certainty that there isn’t. So he’s at number six. Okay. And what does he mean to say? He means: the fact that you believe in evolution only says that by this route one need not reach the conclusion that God exists. But maybe He does. Meaning, you can’t know that He doesn’t. More than that: maybe there is even a proof that God exists. Not only maybe He exists and there’s no proof, but there may also be a proof—just not this one, a different one. And later we’ll see that that is the correct proof. He is mistaken in that too. But we’ll talk about that later.
All right, so that’s regarding the general picture. Let me return for a moment to Pascal’s wager. I want to remove it from the picture so that afterward we can enter the other ways and do it in an orderly way, place them opposite each other, see the relations among them, and so on. So first of all I want to remove Pascal’s wager from the table.
All right, Pascal was a very famous French philosopher and mathematician, considered one of the most gifted people who ever lived. He made discoveries in quite a few fields. He died at age 39, by the way, as was the way of those generations. Meaning, he accomplished quite a bit, and “few and bad have the days of the years of my life been,” as was said. And among other things, one of the things he gave us was Pascal’s wager. He was also religious, besides that.
And Pascal’s wager is basically an argument that is supposed to lead us to belief in God or to religious commitment. Now I want to make an interesting remark, an anecdote. I said he was a mathematician. Not only was he a mathematician—he was one of the fathers of probability theory. That was his field; he was one of the founders of the field. Okay? Now when he presented Pascal’s wager, of course it was based on some probabilistic consideration. Okay? And all the critiques I’ve seen and know of—and it seems to me that that’s all there are; look in Wikipedia, I’ll show you later, they collect all the counterarguments—none of them touch the probability in the thing. Rather, they speak about other assumptions he makes there that are problematic. And I want to argue that he has a problem in the probability, in his probabilistic calculation. So that’s a little more surprising when we’re talking about Pascal. Okay? So that’s my claim. All right, that’s the introduction.
What does Pascal’s wager say? Pascal’s wager basically says… you know what? Straight from the horse’s mouth. Let’s take Dawkins’s formulation. Pascal has one short sentence; it’s not attractive enough. But Dawkins formulates it like this. No, I’m not reading, I’m just… Even if the chances that God does not exist are very high—that is, the chance that He exists is small; as we know, it has to add up to one—there is an even greater asymmetry when one thinks about the severity of the punishment if it turns out that the guess was wrong. The guess is exactly the wager we talked about earlier. Better that you believe in God, because if you are right, there is a chance you will merit happiness forever and ever—yes, infinite happiness. And if you were mistaken, apparently it doesn’t matter. If you were mistaken, maybe you suffered a little, but that is negligible compared to the infinite happiness you will gain. Okay? On the other hand, if you do not believe in God and it turns out you were mistaken, you will be damned in hell forever. Minus infinity—the expected value, yes, the expectation function. And if you turn out to be right, it won’t change anything. On the face of it—ah, yes—you turned out to be right that there is no God and lived as you lived, okay, so what came of it? That’s negligible compared to the infinities we’re talking about. On the face of it, the decision is clear: believe in God. Okay, that’s the formulation.
Basically this is an expected value calculation, right? What he says is this: let’s assume—suppose the chance is 50-50 right now. As my wife says, there are two possibilities: either there is a God or there isn’t, so it’s 50-50, right? Okay. So let’s assume 50-50, okay? Now let’s calculate whether it’s worthwhile for me to believe in God and keep the commandments. So let’s calculate the expected value under the assumption that I believe and keep the commandments, and under the assumption that I do not. Okay? I have to take two possibilities, right?
If I believe in God and keep the commandments, then assuming He does not exist—50 percent—I lost a little, but not much. Right? What? Yes, right. Whatever amount you want; relative to eternal happiness it’s still negligible. So in the end you lost a little with probability one half. But if He does exist, and you kept the commandments and so on—eternal, infinite happiness. Okay? So what is the expected gain? One half times infinity minus one half times x—define it however you like, I don’t care how much. The result is infinity. Okay? So the expected gain is infinitely positive. Okay?
If we do not keep the commandments, again, two possibilities: either God exists or He doesn’t, right? So if He doesn’t exist, then we have some gain—we lived however we pleased—some gain, x, okay, with probability one half. And if God does exist and we didn’t do what He said, minus infinity. What is the expected gain? One half times minus infinity plus one half times x—minus infinity. And therefore the conclusion: the expected value very clearly and decisively favors religious commitment. Okay? That is basically the claim.
What’s more, let’s suppose the distribution is not 50-50 but 99-1. As Dawkins says, for example—he says level six on the scale of agnosticism—meaning he is almost certain there is no God; you can never be certain, so the probability is very small that God exists. Okay? The calculation doesn’t change. When we are talking here about infinities, it doesn’t matter whether you multiply by one half or by 0.99 or by 0.01—the infinity remains infinity, right? Therefore the calculation does not depend on the probability distribution, assuming the happiness and suffering are infinite forever and something like that. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s 50-50 or 99-1 or even more extreme. Okay? That’s Pascal’s argument.
Now what kinds of thoughts are there against Pascal’s argument, Pascal’s wager? So I open Wikipedia. One argument says that Pascal’s wager offers what is basically a false dilemma. Why? Because there are far more than two possibilities. Not only is there either a God or no God, the question is what God is there—Christian, Jewish, pagan, who knows what, all sorts. There are many, many possibilities. So which commandments am I supposed to keep in order to receive the infinite expected gain of one who keeps God’s commandments? Okay? Therefore it’s a difficult question to discuss. But I think that in the probabilistic calculation this refutation doesn’t work. Why? Because all it means is that the probability that the God whose commandments I’m now going to keep is the correct God is even smaller. It’s not 0.01; it’s 0.0001—divide by the number of possibilities. It still, when multiplied by infinity, still gives infinity, because in the end the option of doing none of this is certainly the worst. And all the rest—draw lots among them. But the option of remaining uncommitted to anything, to any of the possibilities, is certainly the worst. What? Right, better to be an idol worshiper than an unbeliever. Yes, of course. Okay, so you can now indeed introduce other possibilities. But here it’s—well, if you really draw lots, how can anyone hold it against you? If you really believe in the worship of God, then here too you won’t receive any punishment; you just won’t receive the reward. You were coerced by your understanding—that’s what you thought, intellectually compelled. And if you draw lots because you weren’t able to reach conclusions, then all the more so—what do they want from you? You weren’t able to reach conclusions. So it seems to me that this objection is, let’s say, not decisive.
There is another objection, for example what Dawkins claims, and it’s a simple point: belief is not at all something you can adopt by force of a probabilistic consideration. Meaning, let’s suppose I reached the conclusion that the positive expected value is to observe the Sabbath and keep all the Jewish commandments. Okay? Does that mean I believe? The question of whether I believe or do not believe is a question of arguments and conclusions, or the scientific toolbox, or the philosophical toolbox, or whatever you want. But if I’m already there, then I don’t need Pascal’s arguments. And if I’m not there, then what do you want—that despite the fact that I don’t believe, I should keep the commandments? First of all, that has no value. Keeping commandments without belief is a kind of technical act; it has no value. Okay? Second, if you tell me that on that basis I should also believe, that is of course absurd. I can’t believe on the basis of expected-value considerations. I have to decide either I believe or I don’t, and expected-value considerations are irrelevant. This is what’s called pragmatism, yes? I adopt facts or factual conceptions because it benefits me or because it’s most worthwhile. That has no connection. I mean, what are you going to tell me—that God will also value commandment observance because of that self-interest?
The question whether there is value in commandment observance by someone whose level of certainty is 40 percent—I’m going back to the earlier wager we talked about—you first need to decide that these 40 percent are enough for you. And that’s it. They’re not enough. So if they’re not enough, then you don’t believe. I don’t care that it’s 40 percent. So if you don’t believe, there is no value in your commandment observance. Believes at 40 percent, and within that… So I said: in the end you also need to make the wager of what you decide. Forty percent is true, but one person with 40 percent will say I believe, another person with the same 40 percent will say I do not believe. And I think that in the end you have to make that leap. What is an axiom? I’m saying, when you raise a refutation against Pascal, you’re assuming another assumption here that can be disputed. I, for example, think it is definitely a problematic assumption. Okay? Again, all these objections have something to them, but none of them is really decisive, let’s put it that way.
You could say that someone who doesn’t believe gets eternal hell in the world to come, whose existence I’m saying is part of the picture if you don’t believe, and then you’re in trouble. But the question is whether there is such a thesis. The question is whether there is such a thesis. You’re making it up now; if you say you’re making it up, then why should I care? Everyone can—if you know, if you know, then indeed it would have to be one of the calculations. You can—no, He won’t have to thank you, because He won’t believe you that you think that. Meaning, people who pass on a tradition to Him—it could be that they are mistaken, but he believes them that that’s what they’re claiming. Now he has to weigh whether he’ll accept it or not. But if someone just tosses something out to me, I won’t weigh whether to accept it, because it’s clear to me that he himself doesn’t accept it. What do I have? Someone will tell me, “I also saw a flying demon with three wings.” If I don’t believe him that he saw it, I don’t need to consider whether to believe him or not.
So in short, these are all the objections. There are a few more shades like these or different shades, but… But what if the religious thesis… what? If we say that chaos exists and all that… that’s the religious thesis. That religious thesis says yes—we’re talking about the religious theses, and we’re trying to sort among them which one to go with. That’s what the religious thesis says: infinite punishment or infinite reward. Forever, yes? Rectification of the soul forever, life in paradise, I don’t know, each according to his own formulations. So that is basically Pascal’s wager with all the objections to it. But as I told you before, I don’t know why—I don’t understand why the simplest objection to Pascal is just to explain to him that he made a probabilistic mistake. No, it has nothing at all to do with all these objections.
What do I mean? It’s not entirely probabilistic. Meaning, his expected-value calculation is correct, but the question is whether expected-value calculation is relevant to the problem. Look, he is essentially assuming that we ought to make decisions according to expected-value considerations, right? That’s basically what he assumes. And if you do the expected-value calculation, then the expected-value calculation is what determines what is rational to do or how it is rational to behave. Right? That is basically his assumption. But of course that’s not true. It’s not true.
First of all, as a statistical fact—what is expectation? When I say, for example, that if I toss a coin, there is a 50 percent chance it lands heads and a 50 percent chance it lands tails. Fine? What does that mean? It means that if I toss the coin many, many times—the law of large numbers—then half the time it will land heads and half the time it will land tails. Now once that’s so, I also say regarding a single case, if I toss the coin one time, there is a 50 percent chance it lands heads and a 50 percent chance it lands tails, right? But in fact what expectation tells me is what the result will be when I perform the experiment infinitely many times. As for what I do in one experiment, that doesn’t say much. For example, the chance that when you toss a coin six times it will fall exactly three times heads and three times tails is very small. One must understand: the chance that it will divide exactly three-three is small. And therefore there is a mistake here in the understanding of the concept of expectation. The concept of expectation tells me how I should behave on the assumption that I’m going to do this thing infinitely many times, or very many times. Okay? But if I do this thing once, who said at all that expectation is a relevant consideration? And let me give you an example.
I offer you a lottery, okay? We’ll toss a coin. This is really Pascal’s wager. Okay, now in this lottery, if it comes up heads, you earn a billion dollars—a billion billions of dollars, okay? I don’t know whether there are that many dollars in the world, but let’s assume. Nowadays you can invent them; you don’t even need to print them. If it comes up tails, then nothing happened: zero, nothing happened, okay? Now you need to buy a ticket for this lottery. How much would you pay for such a ticket? By expected-value reasoning, one half times the billion billions, right? If you have it—if you don’t, you don’t—but if you do, you do. But let’s take it further. The coin is not a fair coin, okay? The lottery has a one-in-a-billion chance that you earn—heads—and in all the rest, in almost one, it comes up tails and you earn nothing. Okay? What is the expected gain? If it comes up heads, which is one billionth, you earn a billion billions; meaning one over a billion times a billion billions is a billion, right? Plus something very, very small times zero—doesn’t matter—the expected gain is a billion, right? Agreed? How much do you pay for a lottery ticket like that? A million, would you pay? One thousandth? Anyone who pays a million is crazy. Why? The expected gain is a billion. There is no error in the calculation. But the chance that you will reach that expected gain is negligible. People confuse the most probable result with the average result. That is not the same thing. Sometimes the average result is a very, very improbable result. There is almost no chance you’ll get it, even though that is the average result.
Now notice: if I’m offered this lottery infinitely many times, I pay any amount up to a billion, because in the end I really will come out ahead if I do the lottery infinitely many times. But if I’m offered it one time—again, understand this well—if I’m offered the lottery infinitely many times, for each time I pay a billion, not in total—for each time I pay a billion and I’ll come out ahead by a billion minus one and I’ll come out ahead on each lottery, on each coin toss I pay a billion dollars and I’ll come out ahead. But if I do the lottery once, for that single lottery I wouldn’t pay even ten shekels. I would not pay ten shekels for it.
You go out onto the road all the time, right? You take a risk with your life. The chance of getting hurt is very, very small. A risk to life is a billion dollars, right? But the chance of getting hurt is small. Fine, the chance of getting hurt is small, but if that chance materializes there will be a terrible cost. Does anyone hesitate at all about starting to drive a car, or crossing the street, or something like that? No one. Why not? Because we do this experiment one time, and people do get hurt. It’s not completely hypothetical and never happens. It happens. It happens quite a bit. Fine. But still, this specific street crossing that I am making—the chance that I get hurt is negligible. Exactly like with missiles. This fear people have of missiles flying—that’s all psychological. The risk is zero, it’s obvious. There is no chance of getting hurt; the chance is negligible. But what? Once there are many, many people and the missile hits somewhere, the chance that I get hurt is negligible, again. There is no reason to fear when sirens start and missiles are flying. It’s nonsense. Whoever is afraid is simply an irrational person. It is not dangerous in any way.
But clearly, if all of us don’t enter a protected space, then someone will get hurt, right? Now that—that. Doesn’t matter. I still can stay outside because the chance that it will be me is negligible, so what difference does it make? Right, but each person will make that calculation. Each one of us will stay outside because the chance that he gets hurt is negligible, and then one person will get hurt. Therefore the correct way to behave—certainly given that when someone gets hurt it’s a public blow, because we took a hit in terms of image, morale, whatever you want to call it—so the conduct should indeed be that people need to enter protected spaces. But one need not be afraid. Whoever is afraid is irrational. You should enter protected spaces, because that is the rational behavior, without being afraid. Huh? That’s what I’m saying. But each individual, as a unit, should enter. Each person makes this calculation. And therefore in the end someone will get hurt. And therefore the rational way—on this one could talk a lot—is on the one hand the prisoner’s dilemma and the categorical imperative. They are two sides of the same coin. Meaning, Kant’s categorical imperative is essentially the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s the same thing. And that is what I’m saying here: it’s exactly that. Meaning that each person separately, from his own perspective, when he maximizes gain—why enter a protected space? The chance that I get hurt is negligible. Why waste energy walking all the way to the protected room there in the next building? The problem is that each one of us needs to make that calculation, and it is a correct calculation from the standpoint of each of us. But if all of us make that calculation, then one of us will get hurt with high probability. Okay?
For example, someone once asked me a halakhic question. What happens in a situation where there is a siren and you’re stuck outside the building? Fine? The question is whether you may activate the lock—meaning perform an electrical action—in order to open the door so that you can enter a protected space. I told him: in my opinion, absolutely not. Why? Because there is no danger. You do it because of the categorical imperative. Now if the whole world were stuck outside and everyone asked me whether to activate it—yes, activate it, everyone activate it, everyone activate it, because in the end one person will get hurt. But if one person is stuck outside and everyone else is sitting in their protected spaces, or at least can sit in protected spaces, that does not justify desecrating the Sabbath in any way. There is no danger. The danger is negligible. Okay?
And what about voting in an election when it causes neglect of Torah study? Exactly the same question. It’s the categorical imperative I spoke about earlier. The categorical imperative. I say: vote in the election, but not because you will make the difference. You won’t affect anything. So I say, you won’t affect anything—but if everyone makes the calculation of neglect of Torah study, then no one will be at the ballot box, and that will be the greatest neglect of Torah study. Because if there is no ballot box and no state, there won’t be Torah either. And that is exactly the point; it’s exactly the same consideration.
I wrote articles about this; if you want I can point you to them. These are endless arguments I have with my son. Should one go vote? Should one evade income tax? All these calculations are the same calculations. No, it’s the same calculations. You evade a thousand shekels of income tax. Nothing happened. Not a hair in state policy will be different because a thousand shekels are missing from the state treasury. A thousand shekels in the state treasury appears somewhere after the decimal point that no one even sees at the scale of a state treasury. So I hid a thousand shekels—what’s the problem? Nothing happened. No one lost anything from it. Yes, but if everyone hides his thousand shekels, then we’ll be very close to the decimal point, maybe before it. Okay? Therefore it is forbidden to evade income tax—but not because… but the truth is, if I evade, it won’t affect anything at all. Not at all. And if I make my decision on my own and everyone else in any case makes their own decisions, what does that have to do with what I decide? So therefore the argument always comes back: okay, after you said that, you convinced all the idiots not to evade income tax, and now I’ll evade my thousand shekels. The problem is that then everyone will say the same thing. We too—“you convinced all the other idiots, and I’ll evade my thousand shekels.” And it’s some kind of gentlemen’s agreement, you see the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s some kind of gentlemen’s agreement among the different parties that all of us won’t evade, even though in each individual’s maximization calculations, the calculation says yes, evade. Okay, so I return to our coin.
So what does this coin experiment actually mean? That expectation is a very, very mistaken guide to behavior. When is it relevant, when is it sensible? In a place where the expectation is somewhere in the area of the expected result too. It depends on the shape of the distribution—where the average lies, whether far out under the Gaussian or somewhere in the middle. Not necessarily Gaussian, but never mind, whatever the distribution may be. In a place where the average result is also the more probable result, then it is definitely a good measure. Meaning, suppose they tell me: look, I’m tossing a coin, 50-50, a fair coin, and you earn a thousand shekels. Okay? And the chance of getting the thousand shekels is 50 percent. You can definitely understand someone who invests 400 shekels in order to earn 100. Okay? Fifty percent that he gets 600, yes? He earns a thousand, so that’s 600, and 50 percent that he loses 400. But if it’s one in a billion versus one minus one in a billion, then don’t invest a penny. Even though the expected gain is billions, don’t invest a penny. Why? Because the chance that you receive that astronomical gain is negligible.
What does that mean, really? It means that when you make an expected-value calculation in a distribution that is very, very asymmetric—in two possibilities, say—a very, very asymmetric distribution, meaning one minus epsilon versus epsilon, then there is no reason at all to use expected-value considerations. Expected value is not a guide to rational behavior. It is not right to behave that way. Again, if you do this infinitely many times, then expected value is an excellent consideration. But if you do it once, then no.
Now the classic example of this is what’s called the St. Petersburg paradox. They teach this in courses on stock-market investment. I offer you lotteries again. We’ll talk about lotteries; you’ll need to buy a ticket. I describe the lottery process. We toss a coin. If it comes up heads, you get 2 shekels and the game ends. If it comes up tails, you get nothing; we toss the coin again. If it comes up heads, you get 4 shekels and the game ends. If it comes up tails, we toss the coin again; you get nothing; we toss the coin again. If it comes up heads, you get 8 shekels; tails, zero; we toss again; 16; powers of two, yes? That is, 2 shekels on the first heads, 4 shekels on the second heads, 8 shekels on the third heads, and so on. Okay? That’s the lottery I’m offering you. How much do you invest in such a lottery? What is the price of the ticket? I’m putting out a tender now—who buys the ticket? One shekel? Okay. Two? Sure? Two shekels? At least two, because you can’t lose. How did you say? You’d give two shekels; you can’t lose. No, you can lose if it’s tails forever to the end. Yes, or at least for your whole life they keep tossing, and when you die maybe your heirs will receive astronomical sums. Yes, this is Honi the Circle-Maker, you know, investing in a lottery so that his descendants will earn billions.
So what does the expected-value calculation say here? Notice, it says this: think about the tree—yes? Not the tree of heads and tails, but the binary tree. That is, there’s one result of heads and one result of tails. If heads, and it ends—2 shekels, right? Under tails: heads or tails, right? Under heads there: 4; here it is—sorry, here 4, here you toss again; 8; toss again, and so on. So it’s a triangle—not Pascal’s triangle, but it’s a triangle—and the expected gain, notice, collect all the ends of the tree: with probability one half you get 2; with probability one quarter you get 4; with probability one eighth you get 8; with probability one sixteenth you get 16. So all those products are 1, right? One half times 2 is 1; one quarter times 4 is 1; one eighth times 8 is 1. The expected gain in this lottery is infinite. One plus one plus one infinitely many times. The expectation, the average gain—not some maximal gain you might reach in the best case. No, the average gain of such a lottery is infinite shekels, new and old. Okay?
How much do you pay for a ticket to such a lottery? Notice, I’m talking about a single lottery. The expected gain of a single lottery is infinite. A single lottery means the whole chain—that is, heads, continue; heads, continue; and so on—that’s a single lottery. After that we’re done and start over; that’s called doing the lottery many times. Okay? I’m talking about a single lottery that can also take a long time, but it’s one lottery, one game. Okay? How much money do you invest in a ticket for such a single game? I don’t know, ten shekels, twenty shekels, something like that. Each according to his risk appetite or how much money he has, doesn’t matter. Right? Certainly not infinity, and not ten thousand either. Okay? Someone who invests ten thousand shekels in such a thing should be hospitalized. Even though the expected gain is infinite. Why? Because the chance of reaching the big gain—think what the chance is of reaching a gain of 32 shekels. One in thirty-two. One in thirty-two means three lotteries out of a hundred in which you’ll earn 32 shekels. That’s already a very small chance. The chance of earning a thousand shekels is one in a thousand. Okay? Yes, one k. That’s one in a thousand. Right? One in a thousand is already not something worth taking into account at all; it won’t happen. In a single lottery, something with a one-in-a-thousand chance won’t happen. So the chance that you’ll earn a thousand shekels won’t happen. And you’re talking to me about infinity? It won’t happen.
But that’s the average. It’s not some extreme hypothetical case that could happen in the best case. No—it’s the average. But if you do—say if I were offered infinitely many such lotteries, where each lottery continues until it stops, yes? But then we come back and do the lottery again and again and again infinitely many times—then for each such lottery it would be worth paying infinitely many shekels. For each one. To pay infinitely many shekels. Really—you would come out ahead. Do you understand? If there are infinitely many such lotteries. Fine, not important, I’m just saying there’s also that side. It doesn’t matter. I’m speaking on the conceptual level. One has to understand: it’s not very intuitive. It’s very not intuitive, but it’s very logical when you think about it.
And this means, basically, that when you approach a wager, the price you’re willing to pay for participation in that wager is not determined—not necessarily determined—by expected gain. It is a mistake to determine it by expected gain.
Let’s return to Pascal, then, say through Dawkins’s lens, okay? That the chance God exists is very, very small. It exists, but very, very small. Pascal tells him: look, even on your assumptions, it is still worthwhile for you to be committed. Since the reward is infinite, then even if the chance is one in a thousand—I don’t know exactly what—it is still infinity, right? The chance is small, but the expected gain is still huge, right? Nonsense. It is exactly parallel to that lottery I told you about with the coin, with two possibilities: the chance is one in a billion to earn a billion billions. That is exactly, one for one, Pascal’s wager. Who would pay more than two shekels for that? I don’t know; I wouldn’t pay even two shekels. Nothing. There is no chance it will happen. A one-in-a-billion chance—do you know what that is? That’s something that never happens in life. A one-in-a-billion chance is that a basketball will pass through a wall. It will undergo quantum tunneling. There is indeed such a chance that the basketball will pass through the wall. There is such a chance, it’s just incredibly, incredibly small. Therefore it never really happens, but quantum physics teaches us that there is such a chance. It could happen. It does not contradict the laws of nature; the chance is just very, very small. All the laws of mechanics we know are basically built on the fact that the quantum weirdnesses have very small probabilities. That’s all.
Think of wagers that way too, and you’ll see that when I assume the law of gravity, or when I assume that when I throw a ball it will come back down to me—that’s usually what one assumes, right? I shoot at the basket, I assume that if I bank it off the backboard I get two points, right? But if there’s quantum tunneling there, then I hit exactly the little square on the backboard and it will pass through to the other side. It’ll be out of bounds, possession to the other team. Okay? I don’t build on that happening. Why not? Because there is no chance it will happen. For all practical purposes, the probability is zero. There is no chance it will happen. Okay? Same thing here. Therefore Pascal’s wager is mistaken at the probabilistic level. It’s not mistaken because there are other faiths and because there’s this and that. All those objections are objections that are partly right, partly less right. That’s not the point. The point is that the wager is mistaken—again, not a probabilistic mistake, maybe that’s not precise. The expected-value calculation is correct. So it’s not a probabilistic mistake. Do you understand that someone who would invest infinite money in the St. Petersburg lottery would be fired from the investment house immediately? Right? What do you mean? It’s the expected gain; I think it’s worth a million dollars. Okay? My expected value is to earn infinity. Why not? He’d be dismissed. Why would he be dismissed? Because he’s not logical. Why? He’s fine—he’s relying on the incredibly small chance of earning more than a million. A small chance, but it exists, and the expectation is still positive, so what’s the problem? The problem is that a rational person doesn’t do things like that. Okay? A rational person does not go by expectation when the chance of reaching the expectation is negligible. Even though that is the true expectation. In a single trial.
But wait—if we lived infinitely many times, yes? Then it would turn out that actually Pascal would be worthwhile for me. Suddenly you live infinitely many times, suddenly it is worthwhile for me. What’s the logic here? What do you mean? It would be worthwhile in terms of expected-value considerations. There are the previous objections—the question whether expected-value considerations are really correct, because who says that if you don’t believe then what helps that the expectation is positive? You don’t believe. But okay—still, in terms of expected-value considerations as a lottery, yes, then you should invest in the lottery. It’s like St. Petersburg. In the St. Petersburg lottery, if we repeat it infinitely many times, invest any amount they demand of you for each lottery. For each one, not together.
But what if there is a world to come with infinite expectation? It’s a question of yes, it exists, or no, it doesn’t. If I lived infinitely many times, on the contrary, I’d get burned by it more. In each of these lives I’d be giving up my pleasure. Infinite, and all those big things you had opposite it—they shrink. So why is it more logical and more worthwhile if you lived infinitely many times than if you lived once? Let’s leave the world to come aside. With the coin, do we agree? Yes, obviously. So what’s the difference? The difference is your analogy regarding, as it were, Pascal. What? Whether it’s one time or infinitely many times that you live here. If you lived infinitely many times, then it would be worthwhile? In what sense? Because then my expected gain would be positive—what do you mean? I’d get the world to come for the first time I lived, world to come for the second time I lived, world to come for the third time I lived. Again, you can say the world to come is not something cumulative. I don’t understand the world to come. If it’s not cumulative, then okay, then no. Because if you live in the world to come forever, then how will you return afterward for the next lottery? Meaning, you’re already there. Fine, okay. But I’m saying on the conceptual level, my claim is not that if it’s infinitely many times then it’s worthwhile. My claim is that if it’s one time, then it isn’t worthwhile. Whether if it’s infinitely many times it is worthwhile—that’s a question whether that’s even a coherent definition. But if it’s one time, it isn’t worthwhile. And that is the mistake in applying the criterion of expectation to a single trial in this context. In other contexts, maybe not. In the context of a 50-50 lottery over reasonable sums, then yes—make an expected-value calculation and there is definitely logic in participating in such a lottery according to the criterion of expectation. Okay.
What? Again, a lottery ticket costs a few shekels. Someone who wants to spend a few shekels for a very small chance of earning a lot of money—fine, there’s nothing irrational in that. As long as it’s a price you know you can handle, it doesn’t really put you into some problem. If you get into trouble—that’s exactly the addicts. After all, the addicts are supposedly right, aren’t they? In the end, when they win the billion, that’s the only way they have to get out of their mess. But that is exactly the problem of addicts—they invest on the assumption that they will win, while the chance they will win is negligible. Okay? So therefore… yes, right. Therefore it’s not rational. Therefore you say it’s an uncontrollable urge, because by rational calculation you don’t reach that conclusion. Okay? I accept that angle. What? The expectation is negative in the state lottery, but that doesn’t matter. Because let’s say there’s a person who fell into debt, okay? He has problems, he can’t live, he’ll have to kill himself. He has no way to live, no way to pay back his debts. Now he has a hundred shekels left. Logic says: invest those hundred shekels in the lottery, buy five tickets. You have a very, very small chance of winning, but otherwise you’re dead already anyway. Meaning, for a person like that, even a small chance of winning a lot of money is a positive expectation. It’s not a negative expectation. It’s a positive expectation when you don’t only calculate money but also calculate life. Okay?
All right, so now we’ve removed Pascal’s wager from the table. We now move to a somewhat more systematic discussion of the ways of arriving at faith in God. Just a few remarks, and next time we’ll begin the first way. So let’s spell out the ways a bit.
Kant’s three ways—which are really what need to be spelled out, because intuition we know what that is, tradition we also know what that is—Kant’s three ways are the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, and the physico-theological proof. They differ from one another—remember the structure I described at the beginning?—they differ from one another in the factual starting point on which they are based. They differ from one another in the philosophical assumption that takes those facts further, and they differ from one another in the conclusion they reach: who is the God whose existence we proved.
Now the ontological proof starts from zero facts. It is basically an argument that tries to prove God’s existence without premises. Without premises. You don’t need to assume anything. Through conceptual analysis it arrives at the conclusion that God exists. A kind of philosophical hocus-pocus. Everyone mocks this argument terribly, because with hocus-pocus you can prove all kinds of things, I don’t know what. But as Bertrand Russell said—he was a proud and famous atheist—it is much easier to laugh at the ontological proof than to put your finger on what is wrong with it. And putting your finger on what is wrong with it is not simple, and therefore I nevertheless want to deal with it, even though in the end I think it doesn’t hold water.
So that is the ontological proof: a proof that starts from zero facts, conceptual analysis, and suddenly—flip-flop—it pulls out the existence of God. A factual claim about the world. Some argue that this itself is a refutation of the proof. You cannot prove a factual claim about the world from zero premises. Right? Without observation, without assuming anything. It can’t be that from conceptual analysis a fact about the world emerges. Why? Because the world doesn’t owe you anything; it was here before. Because the fact that you think in a certain way doesn’t say anything about what goes on in the world. Okay, that’s basically—but of course this begs the question. Obviously. It begs the question. Descartes. Right, the cogito. And I’ll say more about that when we discuss the ontological proof. There are several arguments throughout philosophy that try to make an ontological move, meaning to prove the existence of something or make a claim about the world solely by conceptual analysis. One of them is the ontological proof; the second is Descartes’ cogito. By the way, Descartes also has his own ontological proof, and so on.
The second path is the proof—the classification or terminology is Kant’s—the second direction is the cosmological proof. A cosmological proof does indeed start from a factual assumption, from an observational starting point. But the observation is a minimal one, very simple: there is something. Something exists; there is a world, I don’t know. Something exists. Without assuming anything about what there is in this world, or whether it is simple or complex, from the mere fact that something exists I can prove that there is a God, that something made it, and therefore there is a God. That is the cosmological route. So you see: the ontological proof assumes nothing; the cosmological proof assumes one simple premise.
The physico-theological proof starts from a more complex premise, or from a less simple premise. Namely, not only is there something, but this something also has a character. It is complex, it appears designed—each one with different formulations—but this something that exists has some specific character, and from that specific character I can prove the existence of God. You see that the ranking among Kant’s three ways of arriving at God’s existence is according to the question: what is the scope of the factual basis from which you start? The ontological proof—none; you assume no facts at all. The cosmological proof—you assume one simple fact: there is something. In the physico-theological proof you already assume several facts: there is a world, and it is complex and designed, and there are relations among the objects in the world, or the properties of the world, and so on. Okay? So the physico-theological proof. Meaning, the ranking made among these three proofs is basically a ranking determined by the scope of the factual basis from which we begin. Okay, that is basically Kant’s ranking.
Besides that, I say, intuition and tradition—we understand what is meant. Intuition: I have an intuition that God exists; no need to explain. Or tradition: a tradition came down to me, I believe this tradition, and if they encountered the Holy One, blessed be He, then apparently He exists. Usually one does not encounter something that does not exist. So the proof from tradition and from intuition I don’t need to explain.
Another point that is important to emphasize here is that every way of proving God’s existence, or every way of arriving at faith in God, yields a different conclusion. It proves the existence of a different object. For example, Anselm’s ontological proof, which we’ll discuss first—I’ll discuss them in this order—Anselm’s ontological proof proves the existence of the perfect being. Meaning, he shows through conceptual analysis that there must exist in the world a perfect being. Okay. So in his view he proved the existence of the perfect being; that is what he calls God.
The cosmological proof does not assume something about God’s perfection. It says: if something exists, and that something apparently needs someone who made it, because it does not make itself and it did not always exist, therefore there is something that made it, and that something is God. Fine? Whose existence have we proved here? The existence of whoever created the world, right? Whoever created something from a vacuum—from something that wasn’t there, he created something that was there. So the being whose existence we proved by the first way is the perfect being. The being whose existence we proved by the second way is the creator—that is, someone who created the world from a vacuum, who is capable of producing something, regardless of the character of that something, out of a vacuum. Creation ex nihilo. Okay?
The physico-theological proof talks about complexity. If there is a complex world, a complex world does not arise by itself. Someone assembled it. There is an engineer in the background of this matter. So whose existence have we proved here? The existence of an engineer-entity, basically an intelligent entity, right? In the first two possibilities we did not speak about the intelligence of this entity. It may be that if He is perfect then He is also intelligent, but that is already a question on which Saadia Gaon might disagree. But the third way—the third says that He has some kind of infinite reason, or great intelligence, I don’t know about infinite, but very great intelligence. He knows how to assemble planned, coordinated, complex things. So we proved the existence of the wise being, the perfect being, the being capable of creating ex nihilo, the creating being, and the wise being or the perfect engineer or the ideal engineer, something like that. Okay? Do you understand that basically each such path proves the existence of a different object? We always talk about proofs of God’s existence, but each such path actually proves the existence of an object defined differently. Tell me what path you used to get to God, and I’ll tell you who the God is that you reached. It’s not the same one.
And none of these fellows—for now I’m allowed to speak like Rav Ashi about the fellows—none of these fellows gave the Torah at Mount Sinai, or at least not necessarily. Right, there is no connection yet to the religious dimensions. I simply proved the existence of different philosophical objects. That’s all. From here to Mount Sinai is a great distance, if there is any distance at all to be crossed. Okay?
In addition, I have one more type I need to present to you, and that is the revealing argument or theological argument. To define it I need a whole lecture of its own, so I’ll leave that for the stage at which we get to it. But I’ll just say, for example—and I’ll give the example right away—here is a proof of God’s existence from the existence of morality. “If there is no God in this place, then they will kill me,” as it says in Genesis. And the moralists say that in a place without God there is no morality—which is of course not correct. But what is correct is that in a place without God there is no binding morality, not that there is no moral behavior by human beings. People can behave morally even if they do not believe in God. There are many examples of that. I’m not even sure the statistics here favor believers over non-believers on average. But clearly there can be non-believing people who behave morally. That’s obvious; there are many such people. Okay?
What cannot be, in my opinion, is that in the world of a non-believing person there is binding morality. Meaning, if he behaves morally, that is either a coincidence or a mistake. But there cannot be a binding moral imperative in a place where you do not believe in God, in a materialistic world, let’s call it that, in a world without God. Now this, later on, I’ll call a theological argument or a revealing argument. We’ll talk more about it. But what I want to claim is: an argument of this kind—what does it prove? The existence of whom? The moral legislator, right? Which again is now the fourth God. Okay?
So basically notice that when we talk about different ways of arriving at the existence of God, that’s not precise. We have different ways of arriving at the existence of different gods. Okay? And each path leads me to someone else. Now someone could come and say: fine, there’s Ockham’s razor. Suppose I accept all the proofs. After all, in order to arrive at the existence of God, one proof is enough. But of course it depends which proof I adopted; that will determine who the God is whose existence I arrived at. But it could be that if I adopt all the claims, say I’ve reached the conclusion that all of them are good, all of them persuaded me—what does that mean? It could certainly mean not that I proved the existence of four gods, but that I proved the existence of an object that is also perfect, also the perfect engineer, also the creator, and also the moral legislator. And that could be the same one. There’s no contradiction. And perhaps Ockham’s razor would even tell me that it is preferable to assume that this is one object with all these characteristics rather than four objects each with one of the characteristics. Okay? But that is already, again, a philosophical discussion of how we relate to the matter.
So with that I’ve finished the framework of the discussion. From next time onward we’ll begin to walk through these paths one by one. Meaning, we’ll start with the ontological proof, cosmological, physico-theological, revealing proof; the others perhaps we’ll touch on less. And perhaps in the end—I hope we’ll get there, a distant vision—we’ll also arrive at God in the religious, theistic sense. For now we’re speaking only about the deistic, philosophical God. Okay? And what is the relation between these two, or these four? All right, that’s it for now.