Faith and Its Meaning – Lesson 25

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a question here of Bayes’ theorem, or conditional probability, and therefore these two probabilities do not add up to one. If you want to construct probabilities that do add up to one, you have to put their sum in the denominator, and that will straighten the whole thing out. It’s not that the probability of crib death is one in a million, therefore the probability that the mother murdered is one minus one in a million. No, that’s not it. The probability that the mother murdered is very, very small—smaller even than one in a million. So there are only two options, and they still don’t add up to one? How can that be? After all, there are only two options. No, they don’t add up to one because that’s not really the probability. You have to normalize it. Fine, that’s just a side note for your information. In any case, for our purposes, this illustrates the importance of comparison. When we want to make decisions, we should never examine only one option and its likelihood; we always have to compare it to the likelihood of an alternative, and only then make the decision. Now I want to look at Hume’s critique. Hume’s critique, seemingly, is crushing. Right? True, parents do not lie to their son—but what’s the alternative? The alternative is that supernatural events happened. If I need to ask whether the parents lied or whether a supernatural event occurred—people do lie from time to time, right? It happens. Okay? So if it happens, that means it has some probability, maybe small, but it exists; it does not contradict the laws of nature. So if I need to decide which of the two possibilities is less likely, it’s obvious that the possibility that a miracle occurred is less likely. That’s what David Hume claims. I now want to argue that this critique is not correct. Despite everything I said about the importance of comparison and all that, this critique is not correct. And I’ll bring a few aspects that show this. First of all, let me tell you another story. When I was in yeshiva, there was a guy two years older than me, something like that, who got hepatitis. And for months and months he just didn’t recover. He was hospitalized, discharged, readmitted; the jaundice just didn’t go away for a very long time. He wasn’t in yeshiva. Today he’s a known public figure, by the way, but never mind—he was out of yeshiva for a long time. A mutual friend of ours went to visit him, and came back and said: listen, they brought some witch to him, she put pigeons on his belly button—yes, on his gizzard—and the pigeons died one after another, and the claim is that this cures jaundice. Incredibly enough, a day or two later the guy recovered, came back to yeshiva, and everything returned to normal. So I go back home to my parents and tell them this story. They clap their hands; as far as they’re concerned, Gush and Ponevezh and Vizhnitz Yeshiva are all the same thing, because yeshivot are some dark place with primitive thinking. They’re brainwashing you in yeshiva—what kind of nonsense is this? Where’s the logic? Where’s your mind? Stop believing all these tall tales. So I told them that my picture of rational thinking is that if there is reliable testimony about something, or someone whom I regard as a trustworthy witness, then I accept the testimony; as a rational person I only try to think about what the explanation is for the content of the testimony. But if every time testimony reaches me that contradicts my views I simply won’t accept it, that is not a rational approach—that’s just frozen conservatism. I’m basically entrenching myself in the worldview I currently have and refusing to accept anything, any testimony, about something else. Yes, if that really were our approach, today we’d still have the science of Adam. Meaning, every scientist who would tell us about an experiment he did and discovered something that didn’t fit the existing conceptions—we wouldn’t accept his testimony. Because we’re rational people; it doesn’t fit our rational way of thinking, and we’d remain with the science of Adam. So in effect, this argument that says: I do not accept things that are supernatural, or things beyond the worldview I currently hold—that is an argument that is a guaranteed recipe for conservatism. It basically says: I’m not willing to accept testimony about things that don’t fit what I think. I’ll say even more than that: in fact there’s a vicious circle here. Why? Because I, as a rational person—say, think about Hume—Hume as a rational person says there are no miracles. Now, if testimony arrives saying that there was a miracle, he does not accept the testimony because it is improbable. Now suppose, just suppose, that somewhere a miracle really did occur. How could that ever come to David Hume’s knowledge? It couldn’t, right? Because no testimony that would bring it to his knowledge would ever be accepted. So what’s the wonder that David Hume says: look, it’s improbable that there was a miracle because I’ve never heard of miracles? Of course you haven’t heard of miracles, because even if you had heard, you wouldn’t have accepted it. This is simply begging the question, or an unfalsifiable theory. Do you understand? People are attacking mystical thinking in the name of science, and the thesis you are defending—you, man of science, yes, the rational one—is a thesis that cannot be falsified. You are not really putting your thesis—you cannot put your thesis—to a test of falsification. And this is David Hume’s wonderful scientific undermining of tradition. He is basically saying: look, I’m unwilling to accept any testimony about miracles, therefore clearly there were no miracles, and anyone who tells me there was a miracle is highly improbable because of the comparison we made earlier. And if so, testimony about miracles cannot reach me. But if testimony about miracles cannot reach me, then what is surprising about the fact that I’ve never heard of miracles? What am I basing this thesis on, that miracles cannot happen? On the fact that I’ve never heard of them. Of course—because you are unwilling to accept testimony that speaks about them. So in effect he is simply begging the question.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, but like Thomas Kuhn said, there’s always some scientific theory, some paradigm, but after there are more and more challenges, slowly in the end there’s some critical mass and people suddenly say, wait a second, and grab their heads and say let’s reexamine this. If every day he were seeing it, hearing it every day—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Jews say it, millions of Jews and billions of Christians and Muslims and all kinds of primitive people of one sort or another who tell stories about miracles day and night. People hear this all the time. But you treat it with reservations—so do I. But notice there’s a difference between treating it with reservations and saying it can’t be, it can’t be. “It can’t be” is begging the question. And so there is really some kind of circle here in which you entrench yourself and do not allow anyone to challenge it. That is blatant question-begging. Let me perhaps give you an example. In principle, even if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to perform a miracle before the eyes of the whole world, it wouldn’t help Him. Because no one who wasn’t there would accept the testimony about it. So there is no way to perform a miracle such that this information would actually be accepted. Because in principle, the channels that transmit to me information about the occurrence of miracles are blocked a priori.

[Speaker C] Exactly—Maimonides says this too. In fact Maimonides, in the Mishneh Torah, says—he doesn’t say—precisely about those who were there, those who were there he doesn’t say they would deny the miracle, but about others he says they would cast doubt on it and say it never happened at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what?

[Speaker C] Exactly that—exactly what happened. So what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. So what’s the claim?

[Speaker C] That he’s basically saying what David Hume says, and reaches the conclusion the Rabbi is saying too: that faith cannot be based on a miracle, because people will always deny it, exactly like Hume said.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Faith cannot be based on it because people will always cast doubt on it—that’s fine. I also doubt miracle stories. But to say that categorically, statistically, I am unwilling to accept testimony about miracles, as in Hume’s argument—that is a very problematic statement. I try to get a sense of the person’s story; I do not categorically reject it. I try to get a sense of the person’s story and see. Usually I am very skeptical, because I know there are many charlatans and many people who imagine things and all sorts of things like that. But I cannot rule it out out of hand. To rule it out out of hand is begging the question.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, but Hume was only trying to say that it’s less likely; he wasn’t trying to rule out the—what? I didn’t understand. Hume was only trying to say that a miracle is less likely, no? Meaning, he says compare—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but as a result of it being less likely, now you… it becomes impossible. Because you will not accept any testimony about the occurrence of a miracle. You begin with “it’s improbable” and turn it into “it’s impossible.”

[Speaker D] You’re saying it’s less likely than the second option. What? You’re saying it’s less likely than the second option.

[Speaker B] Is there—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is there anything that is less likely than a miracle? And after you said it’s less likely than the second option, you turned it into something impossible. That is exactly the point.

[Speaker B] No, Rabbi, I want to say something like this. If Hume went out into the street and suddenly saw a miracle, and then again a miracle, and again a miracle, and again a miracle, maybe he’d say: listen, a mirage once is plausible; a second time, a third time, a fifth time—that’s no longer plausible. A miracle is more likely than a mirage happening five times. Maybe then it really would succeed in refuting him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: the world is large and has existed for a very, very long time. Miracles could have occurred in many places, not necessarily to you. If you believe only what happened to you, then you also shouldn’t accept gravitation—you also shouldn’t accept relativity or quantum theory, because those were accepted only in certain laboratories where people observed them. You cannot rely only on your own experience. Now there are many, many people who say they do report miracles. Now that doesn’t mean I will accept every report of a miracle—I won’t. But I cannot reject it categorically. Again, I will explain later where the problem in his argument lies; so far I haven’t said what the problem is. On the face of it, his argument is good. I’m just showing you de facto that this argument leads to something very problematic on the methodological level, because it leads you to hold a thesis that cannot be falsified. In a moment I’ll explain what the real problem in the argument is. Do you understand? It’s not enough that this indicates the argument is problematic; I have to explain where David Hume is mistaken. Because on the face of it, what he says sounds very sensible. So I have to explain where he is wrong—just a moment.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, I still don’t understand your story with the pigeons. Suppose that’s true… but on the other hand, the logic, the mechanism you described—transfer by pigeons that die—we still don’t know of any plausible mechanism that could account for that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But meanwhile, I think by now they’ve given it up; almost nobody believes in it anymore.

[Speaker C] Fine, I’m only saying what surprised the Rabbi—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the time, someone told me he himself had seen this at Meir Hospital—they brought such people to witches with pigeons. They didn’t dismiss it. The claim is: look, the pigeons die, and somehow afterward the people recover. You can’t reject that out of hand. Incidentally, there was some article by Rabbi Tau, who tried to check this systematically. And he claimed that pigeons have some breathing opening in the back, and when they put them on the patient’s belly button it simply suffocated the pigeon. Because it couldn’t breathe in some way—I don’t know, I don’t understand this exactly—and therefore the pigeons died. Now once you already have an explanation for why the pigeons died, the healing becomes less persuasive, because healing does sometimes happen; there is also spontaneous recovery from time to time.

[Speaker C] Of course, of course, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but I’m saying that the fact that the pigeons died—that was the strong part. Why on earth are the pigeons dying? Apparently something is happening there after all. Once they found an explanation for why the pigeons died, then now the healing has to be checked statistically, to see whether the recovery rates are really significant. Probably not, and people abandoned it. But never mind—for our purposes, as far as I’m concerned, the lesson remains. The lesson is that if you have well-founded testimony telling you something that does not fit your logic, rationality does not mean rejecting the testimony. Rationality means checking your logic. Or at least checking—even if not automatically accepting—and not dismissing it out of hand. Okay? Check it. They really did check, and in the end it turned out not to be true. Okay, that’s perfectly fine. But not to reject it out of hand. Okay? Now I’ll bring another example. A friend of mine—I have a good friend—who works in systematic inventive thinking, that’s what it’s called, SIT. Systematic Inventive Thinking. He has a company; he founded a company, and it’s a method developed by some Russian Jew named Altshuller, who later made his way to… a Russian physicist who later got to the United States. You know, he had two Israeli students who brought it to Israel, to the Open University, this method of how one can systematically arrive at inventions. Usually inventions are perceived by us as something creative, but no—there is a systematic way to arrive at inventions. It’s very interesting, by the way, in relation to artificial intelligence. But never mind, he had such a method. So my friend founded a company, and they gave consulting services to all the biggest companies in the world, including crazy conglomerates like Philips, IBM, and the like. So apparently people saw value in it. Among other things, they also did pro bono work in various places, places that needed advice, where they had gotten stuck in things. Once I even brought him to the Yeruham council to help them think a bit about various problems they were stuck on. In any event, he said that once they were invited to the American Midwest. There was a town there with terrible conflicts between different segments of the population. And they decided to run some two-day workshop in which they gathered representatives from all segments of the population—men, women, Blacks, whites, reds, gays, LGBTQ people, straights, every kind and type—to seat them there, I don’t know, twenty people, sixteen people, something like that. They gathered this group for a two-day workshop with my friend; he facilitated the workshop with the aim of bridging some of the conflicts and prejudices and problems that existed there. Fine. So on the first day, he told me—they also wrote it up on his website, though for some reason it’s no longer there today, I don’t know why—but he told me about it. He says that on the first day they did various activities, whatever. On the second day he began by having each person raise one insight from the previous day, and then invite someone else to sit—invite someone else to come up and give his insight from the previous day; the next person would say his, sit down, invite a third person, and so on. Okay? Fine. One person spoke, invited the second; the second spoke, invited the third; fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on. They finished everyone. They said okay, let’s summarize the insights, and he intended to continue the workshop. Then some Black woman raised her hand and said: tell me, did you notice that none of the Blacks spoke? Only whites spoke, of all kinds—men, women, LGBTQ, whatever. Blacks didn’t speak; nobody invited them; they weren’t in the round. And they finished the round and were about to continue this whole thing without any of the Blacks having spoken. There were, say, three of them; none spoke. Four, I don’t know how many there were. My friend was in shock. He’s also a very liberal kind of guy and very sensitive to these issues; not for nothing did he provide that service to that town. He was in shock—how had he not noticed this phenomenon? He says to me: you see, we have some kind of blindness; these people are transparent to us, we don’t see them around us at all, we don’t see them. I told him: I have another interpretive suggestion for you. He’s secular; we have a lot of arguments around these matters. I told him: I have another interpretation for you. You’re lying. It never happened; you’re lying. Why? You have a clear interest in lying, because this story is a terrific story for advancing your liberal agenda, to show us that they’re invisible and that we need to be alert and so on. Therefore you are lying, and maybe you even imagined it or implanted this myth into yourself as though it happened. It never happened. Now there’s Hume’s argument—two possibilities. One possibility is to say: look, you imagined it, you use the story, and in the end you convinced yourself, right? And in fact it never happened. The second possibility: no, it happened literally, and unbelievably enough, in a workshop whose whole purpose was to bridge all shades and differences and everything, exactly this thing happened—a revealed miracle. In other words, I told him: look, according to Hume’s argument there is no doubt that the possibility that you are imagining or lying is far less improbable than the possibility that this actually happened, and therefore I choose that option. That’s how it was. I don’t even remember what he answered; maybe he laughed, because to tell the truth I laughed too. I actually did believe him. I believed him because I know him; he is an honest person and he would not lie to me or invent things. And he’s not a fantasist, and I believed him. But this was a wonderful case, because according to David Hume’s statistical reasoning, in principle I should not have believed him. I have a very plausible explanation—or at least not a very implausible one—for why the guy invented a story, whether intentionally or unintentionally, doesn’t matter. But it’s very unlikely that this actually happened there. So why do I really believe him? Now I ask myself—not him. I laughed with him because he’s secular, so I turned Hume’s argument against him. But the question is: why did I really believe him?

[Speaker C] And the answer, I think, is your trust in him, the Rabbi’s trust in him, is something—it’s a kind of fact, it’s something ontological, it’s not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what “ontological” means. I’ll formulate it a bit differently; maybe that’s what you meant.

[Speaker C] It enters into the equation; it’s not that it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Meaning, the claim is this, like the story with Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz, when the priest came to him and said: why don’t you follow us? After all, we are the majority. It says, “Incline after the majority.” The Christians are the majority—incline after the majority. Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz said to him: I follow the majority when I am in doubt. When I am not in doubt, I do not follow the majority. Because if one finds a piece of meat with a kosher seal in a city that has nine non-kosher stores and one kosher store, no one would say that this piece is non-kosher because we follow the majority of stores. Why not? Because if it has a kosher seal, then it is kosher; I am not in doubt. When I am in doubt, I follow the majority; when I am not in doubt, I do not follow the majority. Similarly, I want to say here too: if I trust my friend, then I—his body language, whatever, or my acquaintance with him—I get the impression that he is speaking the truth. So I am not in doubt; I do not need the statistical calculations. If I don’t know what to do with this situation, then I have two options for interpreting what this stranger is telling me. I can say maybe he’s lying and it didn’t happen, or that it did happen and he is telling the truth. The more plausible possibility is that he is lying or fantasizing or something like that. But if I know the person, then I am not in doubt about what happened here. I know: he is a reliable person, and what he said is probably true. Oh, it isn’t plausible? Then I need to correct my standards of plausibility. Apparently my worldview is not as correct as I thought, because the man is reliable. Exactly as there, my friend who told me about the hepatitis and the pigeons was a reliable guy; I knew him. Therefore I did not doubt his story. After that, one can think, okay, how to interpret it and so on, but I did not doubt the story. Why not? After all, it’s not plausible that pigeons cure jaundice. Later it turned out it probably wasn’t true either, but even from the outset it was obvious—it wasn’t plausible. So why not say, okay, so he lied, fantasized, I don’t know, interpreted the situation incorrectly, as opposed to something supernatural, or contrary to known medical laws, accepted medical understanding? Why didn’t I do that? Because I believe my friend. In other words, that initial impression that says I trust the informant is very important. You cannot begin with the probabilistic calculation. You begin with the probabilistic calculation only if you are assuming you have no other way of knowing what to do with the testimony, and then you do your math: one possibility like this, one possibility like that, and compare probabilities. But if you have a clear stance, it is clear to you that the person is speaking the truth, then you don’t start doing statistical calculations. He is speaking the truth. Oh, this doesn’t fit my worldview? Fine, I need to think what to do with that, how to reconcile it, how to correct my worldview. Everything’s fine. But someone who does that—it is not correct to say he is irrational.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, is this like the failure in using Occam’s razor? No? What? That with Occam’s razor, a lot of times people use it as an alternative to thinking about things directly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning that if you have information, you don’t need to search for the simpler possibility. Yes. That’s what I once heard in a lecture by some outreach rabbi—we won’t mention his name, that would be slander. He told there that what… wait, how did it go? That there’s some—

[Speaker C] I don’t remember anymore—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That he proved scientifically that there is God, I think, or something like that. He has an article; whoever wants can get the article. So I asked for the article—he did not expect there would be anyone who would actually ask for the article—so I asked for the article, and when I read it, it turned out that the fellow said this: in electromagnetic theory there are two kinds of fields, an electric field and a magnetic field. Clearly the theory that… how did it go there? I don’t remember the exact story anymore. But the gist of the argument is this: clearly the theory that there is only an electric field is simpler than a theory that there is both an electric field and a magnetic field. Right? It’s much simpler. But it is not true. Because we know there is also a magnetic field. So what help is it to me that it’s simpler? Meaning, if I have information, and the information tells me that there is also a magnetic field, I don’t begin thinking which theory is simpler—one with only an electric field, or one with both an electric field and a magnetic field—because I know there is also a magnetic field. If I had two possible explanations of the facts and I did not know which one was true, I would choose the simpler one. But if I know which option is the true one, then considerations of simplicity do not interest me. The same thing with probability. Probability is always a function of the information you have. If you have two possibilities and need to consider the probability of each, then of course you may use the information in your possession—you should use the information in your possession to evaluate it. You do not evaluate it independently of information. A person who has more information, the probabilities will look different to him. Suppose someone asks: what is the probability that the result of rolling a die is three? If you have no information at all about that roll, then the probability is one-sixth, right? But if I know that the result of that roll was a number smaller than four, smaller than or equal to four—the result was a number less than or equal to four—then the probability is one-fourth, right? Three is one out of four possibilities. In other words, my information determines the probability result. Probability describes the state of my information; probability is not something that describes something in the world itself. Therefore here too the same thing applies: if I know that the information my friend is giving me is reliable, then I don’t say no, no, I won’t accept it because it’s less likely than saying he’s lying. If I knew nothing about him, then I would do a probability calculation and check what is more and less likely. If I know something about him, then I also need to take that information into account when doing the probability calculation.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, Rabbi—but this information the Rabbi speaks about, the Rabbi’s knowledge of his friend, it’s not really so definite. I mean, it’s not as though the Rabbi tested him in a lab throughout your acquaintance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t test him in a lab, but I tested him through life experience.

[Speaker C] But that’s exactly it—so a lot of emotions are involved here, a lot of desire also to believe him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave emotions aside, because then we’ll get into the eternal debate.

[Speaker C] No, no—I’m saying, but involved in this too is the Rabbi’s own desire, the Rabbi does accept his own desire to believe him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Suppose it were a stranger or… it can influence, but I am supposed to neutralize that when I come to form a position. The question is whether that’s possible.

[Speaker C] Yes, it’s possible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not possible absolutely, but possible. Sure, you can form judgments about people. You ask someone what time it is, he says two fifteen. Who says he isn’t a liar? You don’t even know him. Because you assume a person is not a liar; you see his body language; you say most people in such a situation would tell the truth, so it’s probably true. We assess people, and these are everyday things, things that happen every day.

[Speaker C] That doesn’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t mean there’s no possibility of error; there is always a possibility of error. But it is not correct to say that relying on that assessment shows that I am not rational. That’s what I want to claim.

[Speaker C] No, on the contrary—I’m saying I agree with the Rabbi. I’m only saying that from this one can understand why postmodernism says that one can create a worldview according to what one strongly wants, because then you gather the facts and interpret them in light of the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to take that stance as a warning note, not as a position. Yes, note that you may be mistaken; try to criticize it, to monitor it, to monitor your possibilities of error. Correct! You won’t always succeed one hundred percent, okay, true. You do your best. But after you’ve done your best, to remain in a postmodern position and say, wait—but maybe you’re wrong and maybe you’re right and it’s the same probability—that’s nonsense. That’s just stubborn skepticism. Yes. Exactly the same thing I claim here too. I am not claiming that I am certainly right and certainly my assessment is correct. Many times I’ve been wrong, and it may be that here too I’m wrong. And still, I have my tools, I use them to the best of my ability, and I think that is completely rational. Going straight to probability calculations is the irrational move. I’ll say more than that, and here I return to the argument that—

[Speaker C] If the Rabbi’s wife had told him about the pigeons. Okay. And the Rabbi understands that if she invents for him a story that never happened, that she never saw, then that shakes the whole thought—what do I know of her at all? So the Rabbi has a very, very strong a priori desire to accept the facts, so it’s likely that if it weren’t so, it would be very hard to undermine that thesis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, could be, though I don’t know. Fine. I’m not claiming there is no possibility of error. I’m only claiming that the fact that I go with my own tools does not make me irrational. Now I’ll say more than that. There’s another point here, and here I come to your earlier argument, Shmuel. Maybe that’s what you meant. Hume in effect assumes that there is no God. Since he assumes there is no God, then there are also no miracles. Once he assumes there are no miracles, then a report of a miracle is a report of an impossible event. But if I come to the conclusion that there is God—and we reached that conclusion by force of various arguments I brought in the earlier stages—and I came to the conclusion that there is God in some deistic, abstract philosophical sense, then the a priori problem here has been solved, right? I can no longer dismiss out of hand testimony about revelation or miracles or something like that. Belief in God does not mean there are miracles. Therefore I did not accept your earlier formulation, Shmuel. What I do accept is that belief in God turns the miracle into something that is not impossible. I do not reject it out of hand. So if now testimony comes that a miracle happened or there was a revelation, I have no reason to reject it out of hand. True, I don’t see miracles around me—so what? But I believe there is God, and that He can perform miracles. So if testimony comes to me, I have no a priori reason to reject it. I will weigh it, I will perhaps treat it with a certain skepticism, but it is not true that it is impossible. David Hume is begging the question. Once you assume that there is only nature and no God and miracles cannot happen, then a report of a miracle is a report of an impossible event. Therefore you do not accept it; you do not accept it; you have never seen miracles. You have never seen miracles, so it is impossible—and you entrench yourself inside your begged question. But I, by contrast, after I come to the conclusion that there is God, then miracles are possible. True, around me I have not seen miracles, and stories about miracles are often fictional stories—I agree with that too. But I cannot say that a credible story about a miracle is something I ought to reject out of hand. It’s simply not true; that’s just begging the question. Therefore, in effect, the atheists here are begging the question and the believers are not begging the question. Notice: it is not symmetrical. The atheists beg the question because the atheists say that the moment testimony arrives, we will reject it. They do not say we will remain in doubt about it; we will reject it. They are begging the question. The believing person says: if testimony arrives, all in all I have no reason to reject it. And therefore, since it is possible and testimony arrives, I accept it. That is not begging the question; that is simply a logical argument. Just as if I ask someone what time it is and he says two fifteen, I accept that what he told me is probably the time. That is not begging the question; that is correct perception.

[Speaker C] If people came to David Hume and said to him, our goal isn’t to talk about—we don’t know what God is, leave us alone about God, leave us alone—we want to talk about miracles. Our goal in this project is to prove that there are miracles. Then he says to us: there are two possibilities; the most likely is that there are no miracles. Well, that is really the most basic form of begging the question. Exactly. So without any connection to God, leave God aside—we are talking now about whether miracles exist or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, you are absolutely correct.

[Speaker C] And that’s what I mean. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And so the claim, essentially, is that דווקא the refuting side, the atheistic side, is the one begging the question, while the believing side is not. It’s very funny, because all these people are so jubilant about Hume’s argument. They see it as something so devastating that that’s it—it’s a knockout blow to all religious thought and belief. But it’s actually the exact opposite of logic. Meaning, you have every right to beg the question, dig in behind your position, and remain inside a non-scientific position—but don’t present it in the name of rationality. It sounds a bit strange, this whole thing. So therefore, in the end, the claim is that the testimony argument is a rather weak refutation. That is basically my claim. Fine, one could elaborate on this at great length, I won’t continue, but that’s the point. Therefore, what I want to say is that if I have a basic trust in this system that gives me the report of revelation and so on, then I will accept the report. Right? If I’ve checked more or less, seen that it’s reliable, then fine. Very often, the refutations against the reliability of the testimony argument of tradition are refutations of the form: wait, but it could have been fabricated, it could have been influenced by pagans, influenced by this, all kinds of things that could have happened. Why are “it could be” arguments so often treated in this context as refuting arguments? Why do you say it’s tradition? It could have been that they made it up, it could have been that the priests had an interest, it could have come from there, some influence from here, this interest or that interest—anything could be. Yes, these kinds of theses of “that could also be.” Why is a thesis of “could be” considered a refutation? Because you assume in advance that the story is implausible. Once I have something that could be a reasonable explanation for it, I’ll adopt it even though I have no indication at all that it’s true. It’s like the arguments—I want to claim that if the world is complex, then God created it. So the atheists say—yes, we’ve seen these arguments—they say: no, but maybe there are infinitely many other universes, and we just happen to be in this one that allows life. Could be, right? But there is not a single indication of the existence of even one other universe, certainly not infinitely many other universes. So why is this “could be” a refutation? That “could be” is a refutation only because their claim is that God is blatantly implausible. Fine—but how can there be a complex world? There has to be an explanation, right? So I offer you an explanation that could be. Maybe. Okay—and you assume that God is very implausible, and therefore any hypothesis that merely could be suddenly counts as a refutation. And religious people get terribly confused by this. It’s a mistake to see such a thing as a refutation. So what if it could be? It could be, but it’s highly unlikely. Now, true, if I think there is no God, then fine—then this “could be,” after we’ve ruled out the impossible, leaves us with the improbable. But if I claim no, there is a God, and it is very plausible that there is a God, then why is the fact that it could be otherwise a relevant argument? It’s so not—well, and we are so captive to the field of discussion. Yes, very often the atheists dictate the field of discussion, dictate the framework of the discussion, and within the framework they dictate, wait—what they’re saying really does sound very reasonable. And we forget that in fact we surrendered to that dictated field of discussion. Meaning, the atheists determine the field of discussion. Yes, it’s like arguments between Haredim and modern religious people, Religious Zionists: where are there more great Torah scholars? Or all kinds of childish arguments like that, yes? So that argument often comes down to the question of how you define a great Torah scholar. But very often in that argument, the definition of who counts as a great Torah scholar is a Haredi definition. And now let’s discuss where there are more great Torah scholars. Fine—then usually it will come out that there are more among the Haredim. Okay? Why? Because you don’t even notice that the criteria by which you think and try to decide the debate are the criteria of one side in the debate. The debate is also about the criteria, not only about the conclusions. On the contrary—it is mainly about the criteria. Once we have a dispute about the criteria, it’s no wonder we reach different positions or different conclusions, because our criteria are different. And therefore one has to be careful in such debates not to fall into that pit of allowing one side to dictate the rules of the discussion, and the criteria by which we examine who is right, because the criteria are very often part of the debate. It was the same thing in the merry days of Aharon Barak. Yes, when Aharon Barak began with his judicial activism, he didn’t understand why such harsh criticism arose against him. He said: look, I’m not a side in the debate. There are arguments in society, and my role is simply to try to enable people to conduct the debate. That’s all. I’m just trying to set rules here so that people can conduct the discussion in an open way, and then have the discussion—everything is fine. I am not a side in this debate. Now, what people kept trying to explain to him, unsuccessfully—the man was closed to these arguments, a very smart man, but to these arguments he was closed—they tried to explain to him: you are not outside the debate, you are part of the debate. The rules that you see as some sort of framework rules for managing the discussion were themselves part of the debate. We do not agree with those rules. Not only with the specific contents that you believe in and about which we disagree. That’s part of the dispute, but there is also a part concerning the rules themselves. By the way, the argument over judicial reform is exactly that kind of argument. Yes, it’s obvious. People keep saying, wait, in the name of democracy how can you do such a thing? The debate is over the question of what democracy means. There is a debate about the rules of the discussion; it is not only a debate about the results of the discussion. The rules are not agreed upon. What is democracy? Now, without taking a position on who is right, I’m just saying: notice, all these debates are debates in which each side has a feeling that it is obviously right, and it doesn’t notice that it is testing its own correctness by standards that are part of its own position. It doesn’t understand that the other side has different standards, not just a different position. And therefore the question of who is right is also part of the same debate. Yes? Like the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—do we follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of people? Yes? So each side was sure it was completely right. Let’s take a vote: should we follow the majority of wisdom? Beit Shammai say: obviously Jewish law should follow us. Beit Hillel say: we should go by the majority of people, so obviously Jewish law follows us. And in fact there was a dispute here about the rules of the discussion. How do you decide? Does the majority of wisdom determine it? Does the majority of people determine it? And this is a meta-halakhic dispute. It’s a dispute about the rules of the discussion, not a dispute within the rules. And therefore it was stuck; that’s why a heavenly voice had to come forth. Because it was impossible to decide it when the debate was about the rules of discussion—so how can you decide? You have no agreed-upon rules by which to decide the debate. That is more or less what is happening here today for us. And therefore today the debate is so stuck, because there is no way to decide it, since the debate is about the rules of decision themselves, not about the contents. The contents are only a small part of the debate. We are stuck not because of a dispute between different positions; we are stuck because the standards, the criteria, the framework of discussion are themselves under dispute. And that is something there is really no way to decide.

Anyway, so that’s regarding the argument from testimony. I want to move on to the… so I want to talk about the last part, and I really have very little time left, but still, one can’t just leave it at nothing. So I want to talk about the third stage. The third stage says: let’s say we reached the conclusion—let’s say we reached the conclusion—that there is a God, that He was revealed at Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah. Okay? And now the question is: let’s say I accepted all that—why does that obligate me? So what if God was revealed, gave us the Torah, and all that? Okay, He gave it. Various people could give various things. Josiah also gave things, all kinds of things. So why do I have to obey? Why does that obligate me? This is the third link in the chain. Now here I want to make a short methodological introduction. When we come to ground obligation to a system, we usually run into a logical problem. Think, for example, about the question: why obey the law, the law of the state? Why obey the law? Now clearly I cannot bring, as the basis for the duty to obey the law, a law. You can’t answer me by saying there is a law that says there is a duty to obey the laws. Right? That cannot be a justification. Why not? Because it still still requires justification. If I don’t obey laws, I won’t obey that law either. And in order to ground obligation to a system, the principle that grounds it has to be outside that same system. It has to be prior to that system, right? For example, when I want to ground the obligation to rabbinic laws, I need to find a verse in the Torah—“Do not deviate”—that gives authority to the sages. I can’t say one must obey the sages because the sages said one must obey them. That doesn’t work logically. Okay? Because if I do not obey the sages, then I won’t obey that statement of theirs either. And I need something that is logically prior to the system under discussion. What happens if I now ask: then why obey Torah law, not rabbinic law? Why obey the Holy One, blessed be He—to obey the Torah? Why obey the sages? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. And why obey the Holy One, blessed be He? Because He said so? Well—why should I obey that itself? And here we are already a bit in a tangle. Why are we in a tangle? We are in a tangle because is there something more fundamental or more valid than a command of the Holy One, blessed be He? How can one even look for an answer to the question why the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, should obligate me? Now I want to sharpen this: I am not asking why I feel obligated. That is a psychological question. People can tell me: because of evolution, because you were hypnotized, because your home conditioned you, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. Not interesting. I am not asking how I came to feel this thing. I am asking a philosophical question, not a psychological one. Why do the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He, obligate? Regardless of how I came to this and whether I am biased or not biased. I am asking a philosophical question and not a psychological one. What?

[Speaker C] Suppose there isn’t—they don’t—there’s no such thing as obligation. There isn’t. What there is, is only what I feel. What’s the problem? What’s the problem with a full Jewish life, religious, all 613 commandments, without there being… there’s no such thing. It’s just an empty statement to say that there is an obligation that I don’t feel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For the purposes of our discussion I’ll say there’s no problem at all. Everything is fine. But I’m asking whether there can be a principle that obligates me to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. You don’t need it. You can do without it too. You can’t do without it, but let’s say for the sake of discussion that you can. I’m asking: how can there be such a principle? And then I say: there is some tangle here. I’ll say more than that: suppose I did bring such a principle—perhaps a moral principle. So there is some moral principle that obligates me to obey the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He. Of course, one can then go back and ask: what obligates me to morality? Exactly.

[Speaker C] You can keep going back forever.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where does this stop? Because it’s turtles all the way down. Where can this stop? In other words, when we try to ground obligation to a system, we seem doomed to arrive at an infinite regress, because every time we bring something that grounds it, we’ll ask: and what grounds that? And we’ll go back and back and back. How can such a thing stop? One of two possibilities. Either to say, fair enough, there is no grounding, as Shmuel says here. There is no way to ground anything; it’s all feelings. Second possibility…

[Speaker C] Just feelings, Rabbi?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham]

[Speaker C] Not just feelings—feelings that I feel are obligating, that’s the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You feel—that’s not interesting.

[Speaker C] Take a pill. What do you mean it’s not interesting? That’s everything. What do you mean it’s not interesting? I’m convinced… you keep feeling. I feel that this is something binding, that’s the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You feel—that’s just how you’re built. I’m built differently, so what?

[Speaker C] So what’s your problem? The Rabbi’s problem, but I still…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well then, what’s your problem? Because you want to force things on me by virtue of the way you are built.

[Speaker C] What do you mean force on me? To criticize the Rabbi, if the Rabbi… why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why criticize me? The fact that you are built one way and I am built another way—is that a basis for criticism? Why?

[Speaker C] No, but from my side I feel it, so I feel that this is the right thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You feel it, okay—take a pill, stop feeling. Feelings are worth nothing; feelings are just a result of our makeup. But leave it, I’m not getting into that debate now; that debate will take all our time. I am assuming for now that this is not possible. I’m looking for a basis. A basis that philosophically justifies the matter, not emotionally. Now, apparently this is a tangle. There is no way to get there unless… one possibility is feelings: there is no basis. A second possibility, like what we did with the Holy One, blessed be He—yes, with the infinite regress in the cosmological and physico-theological argument—here too it could be that there is some principle that is self-evident, it does not require grounding, and it stops the chain, the infinite regress; that’s where it stops. There is some basic principle—call it a first notion, an axiom, whatever you like—that obligates by itself. It does not need another principle to ground it or justify it. If there is such a principle, then things can be justified without falling into infinite regress. If there is such a thing, right? So if so, notice: we have before us two possibilities. One possibility is to say there is no way to ground obligation at all. All that can exist is that you have these feelings or those feelings, so you do what your feelings tell you. Obligation—there is no such thing. That is one possibility. The second possibility is that there is obligation, but if I think there is such a thing as obligation on the philosophical level, not the psychological level, then I must assume the existence of a first link that is justified by itself. It does not require something else to ground or justify it. There must be, otherwise it’s an infinite regress. Okay? Exactly what we did with the physico-theological or cosmological argument, now I’m doing on the logical plane. Now think, for example, not about how I ground religious obligation, but how I ground moral obligation. When I ask myself how I ground moral obligation, certainly I cannot bring a moral principle to ground it, right? Because if it is a moral principle then it too requires grounding. The same circularity I talked about earlier. But what field of values or norms is there that is external to Jewish law and morality and Torah and everything, that could ground these domains? There isn’t, there isn’t anything else. Morality, as it appears to us, may be the most basic. Maybe, I don’t know. Others will say religious obligation is the most basic. But there is nothing more basic than the two of them. So apparently the problem of grounding brings us to a tangle. And I want to claim that if someone indeed thinks that obligation exists, and it is not just a feeling, if indeed you think that obligation exists, then you must assume that there are things that are true in themselves. What does that mean? I’ll first give an example about morality. The claim is that if someone asks me—someone says to me: look, I know that morality says murder is forbidden. That’s clear to me. But why not murder? Or in other words, why obey morality? The only answer I can think of to such a question is to tell him: it is not true that you know that morality forbids murder. If you knew that, you would not ask the question “why not murder?” Because the meaning of the statement that morality forbids murder is precisely that murder is forbidden. That is the reason why murder is forbidden. If you don’t understand that, then perhaps what you mean to say is: “I know that people think murder is forbidden.” That is a descriptive statement. I know that in human psychology people think murder is forbidden. But not that you know morality forbids murder. If you know morality forbids murder, that knowledge does not require a justification outside itself. It itself says: if so, then one must not murder. That is the justification. He asks: but how do you know morality forbids murder? I simply know, because it is self-evident. It is obvious. I do not need a justification for that. I understand it immediately. I want to claim the same thing regarding obligation to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. When someone comes and says to me: look, I know that the Holy One, blessed be He—one second—created the world, was revealed at Sinai, and gave the Torah. But why should I be obligated to all this? To me, that is the same question as regarding murder. If you know that God commanded it and you ask, but who says that obligates me, then you do not know that God commanded it. You know that people think there is such a thing as God and that He commanded. If you knew that God commanded it, you would not ask why that obligates me—just like with morality. Now, I’ll explain this a bit more at least on the linguistic plane. And even before the linguistic plane. You might ask me: fine, that’s just evasion, what do you mean? So you define God as someone whose commands must be obeyed. And if you know that God commanded something, then there is no point asking why it obligates me, because that is the meaning of the statement “God commanded it.” You’re just burying yourself in a definition instead of making an argument. No, it is not a definition. It is an immediate intuitive understanding that God is something—or someone—such that when He commands, that obligates. That is the claim. And one who does not understand that has a kind of blindness. It’s like someone who doesn’t understand that murder is forbidden. He is a psychopath. He understands intellectually that morality forbids murder; he just doesn’t see why that obligates him. So he does not really understand that morality forbids murder, because he doesn’t understand what it means for morality to forbid something. He is a psychopath. But a psychopath is someone who has something defective in his mind, a kind of certain blindness toward certain insights. It’s not blindness of the eyes—it’s not that he doesn’t see something—it is blindness of the mind’s eye. And there are certain things that he simply cannot grasp. There is no way to explain to a blind person what seeing means. Therefore I also have no way to explain to a psychopath what it means that morality is binding. And in exactly the same way, I have no way to explain to someone who does not understand the concept of God that if God commands, that obligates. It’s the same thing; it’s a kind of blindness. But notice: what I want to claim is very similar, yet completely different, from another statement, a postmodern one: I think this way, you think differently, and we have no way to speak. These are just different narratives or different kinds of discourse. No. I want to claim that I grasp something and it is true. And if you do not grasp it, that is a kind of blindness—you are mistaken. Postmodernity says you are right like me and I am right like you. I do not want to claim that; I want to claim exactly the opposite. True, very often I have no way to persuade you. Sometimes I do, but not always. But the fact that I have no way to persuade you does not mean that we are equally right, or that there is no right and wrong here. I grasp immediately that if God commands, obviously that obligates. You do not grasp it; apparently you have a kind of blindness. This kind of perception does not exist in you. Just as we call someone who does not grasp the binding character of morality a psychopath—that’s a kind of blindness. Or if someone is simply literally blind, born without sight, he does not understand at all what it means to see. I cannot explain to him what eyes do. What is seeing? Does that mean he is as right as I am? That perhaps sight is true and perhaps sight is not true and the two possibilities are equivalent? Of course not. Obviously, if I see, then that’s how it is. I know—I see it—obviously it is true. The fact that he is blind and does not see—perhaps I have no way to explain it to him, but that is because of his blindness, not because we are equally right. The argument looks very similar to the postmodern one, but the conclusion is the opposite. The postmodern conclusion says: if so, then both sides are right because there is no way to persuade. I say no: maybe there is no way to persuade, but that does not mean both sides are right. I am right and you are blind. And therefore I want to make the following claim: an argument of this kind is not an argument that will persuade the atheist to start serving God. Because he does not have the… he is blind to this matter. So this is not a persuasive argument. The role of this argument is not to persuade. I cannot persuade someone who does not see why the word of God obligates. I can persuade him that there is a God, I can persuade him that God was revealed and gave the Torah, I cannot persuade him that this obligates him if he does not understand it himself. So why is this argument important? Because there are many people who do understand it. Religious people who grew up in certain places—they understand it, they understand that God’s command obligates. But when they start asking themselves, “Wait, but why, really? Maybe this is just a delusion, maybe it’s just a construction implanted in me because of the environment I grew up in,” and so on and so on, then they fall into skepticism and they fall into the same mistake I spoke about earlier. They start saying, “Wait, there are two possibilities here, so who says this one is right, maybe that one is right.” They start making probabilistic calculations when in fact they have knowledge. If you have knowledge, don’t switch to probability. If you think it obligates, then that is perfectly fine—it is legitimate to think that it obligates. The fact that you cannot justify it with arguments does not mean it is arbitrary. It does not mean you are as right as the atheist. It may very well be that you see something the atheist does not see. It is to you that I am speaking with this argument, not to the atheist. I am speaking to you, and I want to calm you down: do not get worked up by the atheist’s arguments. The atheist’s arguments tell you, wait, wait—maybe you are wrong, after all there is another possibility, so now go know which of the two is right. And a great many people fall victim to this, because they say, wait, indeed there are two possibilities here, who says this is right, maybe that is right—a postmodern argument. No. I have an intuition that this possibility is correct. True, there is another possibility as well; in my eyes it is mistaken. If I think that God’s command obligates, there is nothing irrational about that. The fact that I do not know how to ground it in something else—of course, because it is a basic principle. A basic principle can never be grounded in something else. Does that mean that holding basic principles is irrational? If holding basic principles is irrational, then holding any position is irrational, because the grounding of every position is based on foundational assumptions. Therefore it is obvious that the fact that I hold foundational assumptions does not make me irrational, contrary to the skeptical claims of the postmodernist and of the atheists who make use here of postmodernity in the arguments they raise—and it is simply wrong. You think there is no obligation—fine, according to your view that is perfectly okay. But I think there is obligation, and so what if you do not see it? From my perspective, you are blind. Let me perhaps give an example of this. Wait, wait—I just want to finish because I have only a few minutes left, so I just want to illustrate this a bit. Very often people bring the example that there is, after all, a very high correlation between one’s upbringing and one’s worldview. A person who grows up in a religious home, grows up in a religious society, very often turns out religious—certainly in much higher percentages than a person who grows up in a secular environment. And therefore the conclusion is supposedly that everything is really a result of upbringing. It is not really that you believe and he does not believe; it is all a result of upbringing. This is often a claim raised against a religious outlook. People just forget that the very same claim exists against the secular outlook as well. For some reason this is taken as an argument against faith, against believers. It is an argument against anyone who has a position—that your position is essentially the landscape of your birthplace. And I’ll say more than that: if I really arrive at the conclusion that I am right, then the fact that I grew up in a certain environment does not necessarily mean I should abandon it. That environment did not necessarily condition me to believe. It may be that it exposed me to, or developed in me, a certain capacity that was not developed in someone who grew up in another environment, and therefore he remains blind to those aspects of reality. Think of someone who never studied geometry, and now I tell him: look, the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees. He says: no, not at all, I don’t see that. Why on earth should all triangles have the same sum, and specifically one hundred and eighty? I tell him: look, it’s obvious that this is so; there are axioms and proofs and so on. He says: no, I don’t accept those axioms; they don’t seem reasonable to me. What would you say? That the statement that the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees is arbitrary? Those who studied geometry think yes, those who did not study geometry think no, so everything is really just a result of upbringing? We would not say that. Why not? Because we understand that studying geometry is not conditioning; studying geometry is learning. Studying geometry is developing certain capacities to which the person who did not study is blind—he does not have those capacities. Therefore he does not see what I see. So the fact that we have two different positions does not mean that we are equally right or that I should now cast doubt on my own position—not at all. And I claim that religious education, at least, can be something that does not condition but rather develops a certain capacity that secular education does not develop. And therefore the fact that there is a correlation between the environment and the result, between the kind of person formed there, does not mean that everything is a product of upbringing, that it is all conditioning. It may be that this environment develops tools, and an environment that does not develop those tools creates people with a certain blindness to certain aspects of reality, and therefore they become secular. Now, it may be that I am mistaken; it may be that I really am captive to my upbringing—anything could be. Skeptical questions can always arise, and I cannot rule that out absolutely. What I want to claim is only that if I remain attached to my faith, I am not an irrational person. That is my claim. Because I see your position as the result of blindness and not as the result of construction. You underwent one kind of construction, I underwent another. The postmodernists think that the moment there are two positions, that means everything is constructions. No. The moment there are two positions, it means one is right and the other is wrong. One has the tools to grasp the truth, and the other does not have the tools to grasp the truth. The fact that there are, as in moral relativism, different moral conceptions in different places among different groups, does not mean there is no single moral truth. It may be that there is one truth and the rest are mistaken. The fact that there is disagreement, or that there are several positions, does not mean that all positions are correct. That is a logical leap—a truly Olympic leap. Now, I won’t be able to get further here; whoever wants can read in my book The First Existing Being, or there is also an article on my website about philosophical gratitude. And there I try to show that people have that same intuition which says that the one who created me—I have an obligation toward him. Like parents, like the Holy One, blessed be He. And therefore there is in all of us some kind of intuition that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, that obligates. Now someone will come and say: yes, but that is just a construction; really it is all an illusion. I have nothing to say to such a person. All I can say is that if that intuition exists within you, you do not have to assume that it is a construction. You do not have to give it up. You can remain a rational person who adheres to his worldview. And that is the point: these arguments do not come to persuade atheists. These arguments come to help the believer remain a believer and not be frightened by atheists’ arguments. That is the point. Okay, I’ll stop the line of argument here because we’ve reached the end of our time. I did the ending really briefly; in fact The First Existing Being does this whole line of argument—it’s my book. That’s it. Good luck on your exams, have a useful summer, I don’t know what one wishes in a situation like this—a healthy summer; I get fever just from those wishes, they’re hypochondriac wishes. Thank you very much. But may we also be healthy—that doesn’t hurt either.

[Speaker B] Thank you very much, Rabbi, for everything. Well done. Thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye. See you.