Doubt and Probability—in Halakha, in Jewish Thought, and in General—Lesson 37 – Rabbi Michael Abraham
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Probability versus plausibility in Hume’s argument
- The physicotheological argument and the constants of nature
- Atheism, Sherlock Holmes, and the probability question of “God exists”
- The distribution of a die and the non-probabilistic basis of probability calculations
- Logic, assumptions, and common sense
- Trust in reports of miracles today versus defending tradition against Hume
- “Primitive societies” and miracle reports, The Wizard of Oz, and Bayes
- Why accept the revelation at Mount Sinai: a different prior from Hume’s
- Prophecy and miracle, and defining a miracle as something that departs from the laws of nature
- The limits of the concept of miracle and the uncertainty of the laws of nature
- Rarity, meaning, and patterns: one hundred sixes on a die
- The question of perfection and self-perfection, Rabbi Kook, the Jewish people, and the seven Noahide commandments
Summary
General Overview
The speaker sharpens the point that the question of how plausible it is for a miracle to occur is not a question of numerical probability but of plausibility, and therefore formulations like “what are the chances that a miracle will happen” are misleading, because in many cases there is no mathematically defined question at all. He illustrates this through the physicotheological argument about the fine-tuning of the constants of physics and the possibility of life, and shows that even when probabilities cannot be assigned numerical values, considerations of plausibility can still be used. From there he explains how probability calculations rest on prior assumptions that are not themselves probabilistic, but rather based on intuition, common sense, and plausibility, and he applies this also to understanding David Hume’s testimony argument about miracles, the question of the reliability of traditions, and the attitude toward modern reports of miracles, including use of a Bayesian framework of prior and posterior.
Probability versus plausibility in Hume’s argument
The speaker argues that Hume’s testimony argument is sometimes presented as though it were a comparison of numerical probabilities between “a miracle happened” and “the chain of transmission was corrupted,” but in practice it is an argument about plausibility, not probability. He says that the question “what are the chances that a miracle will happen” is not one that can be calculated numerically, but rather a general plausibility assessment like “very, very implausible.” He adds that in many cases people use probabilistic language when what they really mean is considerations of plausibility.
The physicotheological argument and the constants of nature
The speaker presents the claim that the values of physical constants such as the speed of light, the gravitational constant, Coulomb’s constant, and the dielectric coefficient are such that if they were even slightly different, life and biology could not exist, and therefore it is argued that these values are not the result of arbitrariness but of a guiding hand. He shows that the attempt to ask “what are the chances that a continuous number would receive exactly a certain value” leads to the conclusion that the question is not mathematically defined, because in a continuous space one speaks about probability density and ranges, not a single number. He illustrates this through a “lottery” over a real number between 0 and 1, where every specific number has probability 0 even though some number must come out, and concludes that the probabilistic formulation is not well defined. He argues that the argument can still stand in terms of plausibility, meaning by asking whether it is plausible that constants chosen “arbitrarily” would come out in exactly the way that allows life, even without assigning a number.
Atheism, Sherlock Holmes, and the probability question of “God exists”
The speaker describes a typical atheist position according to which, although the formation of a complex world by chance is very implausible, the possibility that God exists is “even more implausible,” and he compares this to the formulation attributed to Sherlock Holmes that once the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. He argues that there is no way to attach numerical probabilities to claims like “God exists” or “God does not exist,” because there is no defined distribution and no sample space from which such a calculation could be derived, so here too we are dealing with plausibility rather than probability. He insists that on the assumption that the world was “created,” there are only two possibilities: either it was created by something, or it was created spontaneously. Therefore, if one claims that spontaneous formation has a very small chance, then the other possibility is simply the complement to 1, even though the discussion of what exactly that “something” is and what it means is a separate matter.
The distribution of a die and the non-probabilistic basis of probability calculations
The speaker explains that probability calculations begin only after one has fixed a distribution, such as the assumption that a symmetric die is fair and therefore each face has probability one-sixth, but establishing the distribution itself does not come from a probabilistic calculation. It comes from considerations of plausibility, intuition, common sense, or physical assumptions about the world. He distinguishes between a “Platonic” die, defined mathematically as fair, and a concrete die in the world, where the justification for assuming fairness is a non-mathematical claim. He argues that one should therefore not dismiss considerations of plausibility, because they are the background from which mathematics begins.
Logic, assumptions, and common sense
The speaker compares this distinction to logic, and argues that a logical argument always rests on assumptions that are not themselves logically proven by the argument. He illustrates this with the syllogism “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal,” and explains that the logical certainty lies only in the move from premises to conclusion, while the central question is whether the premises are true. He distinguishes between rules of logic as a necessary “if-then” transition and disputes of common sense, where people may hold different intuitions without logical contradiction, and adds that logical arguments merely “reveal” a conclusion already contained within the premises.
Trust in reports of miracles today versus defending tradition against Hume
The speaker says that although he defends the possibility of accepting testimony about miracles against Hume, he himself generally does not accept modern reports of miracles, though he does not reject them categorically. He argues that in his experience one can usually find a “bug” in such reports, and therefore he requires an especially high evidentiary threshold, which usually is not met. He presents this as a position that does not fully adopt Hume, because it does not determine in advance that miracles are impossible, but rather demands strong evidence.
“Primitive societies” and miracle reports, The Wizard of Oz, and Bayes
The speaker mentions Hume’s claim that reports of miracles come from “primitive” societies, and argues that this is almost tautological, because educated societies block themselves from interpreting events as miracles and therefore will not pass on such traditions. He brings the example from The Wizard of Oz that in civilized lands “the witches no longer survived,” in the sense that reports are no longer accepted. He adds that the a priori probability of a miracle occurring is very low, and therefore even if, given that a miracle occurred, a primitive society would report it with high reliability, still in most cases no miracle occurred and the society would report by mistake that one did. He illustrates this with an analogy to a medical test for a rare disease with 99% reliability and a prevalence of one in a million, where out of ten thousand positive results only one is real, and explains the difference between \(P(A \mid B)\) and \(P(B \mid A)\), and the dependence of the result on the prior.
Why accept the revelation at Mount Sinai: a different prior from Hume’s
The speaker says that if one bases belief in the revelation at Mount Sinai only on a chain of transmission in the style of the Kuzari argument, then Hume’s attack undermines it, and he even calls the Kuzari argument “a very problematic argument,” and says that in his book The First Existent he wrote that the argument seems “highly doubtful” to him. He argues that acceptance of the revelation at Mount Sinai also rests on a philosophical consideration: if there is a God who created the world, then presumably He wants something from it, and therefore it is plausible that He would reveal Himself in order to convey that will. From this it follows that his prior for revelation is not low but high. He explains that Hume assumes an almost zero prior for revelation and therefore rejects the tradition, whereas in his own case the prior is different, and therefore the chain of transmission is not a decisive difficulty.
Prophecy and miracle, and defining a miracle as something that departs from the laws of nature
The speaker says that prophecy is also a miracle in the sense that the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks with a person, but if the Torah says that prophecy will occur and one trusts the Torah, then the prior for that rises, and testimony about prophecy becomes more acceptable. He defines a miracle as something “against the laws of nature,” not merely a rare event or one with a small chance, and illustrates this with the “spontaneous healing” of a terminal patient, which he says is very implausible but not against the laws of nature. He mentions a letter of Rabbi Shach about the Entebbe operation in order to distinguish between “very improbable” and “a miracle.”
The limits of the concept of miracle and the uncertainty of the laws of nature
The speaker accepts the difficulty in distinguishing between a rare event and an event that departs from the laws of nature, because the laws of nature themselves are inductive generalizations that are not 100% certain, and therefore even a departure from the laws of nature can be interpreted as an update to the law itself. He states that on the philosophical level the concept of miracle is not well defined, and that there is no real empirical way to speak of “above nature,” because further research may always show that the event is natural according to a more precise law. He adds that people’s strong confidence in the laws of nature leads them to call deviations “miracles,” even though essentially we are dealing with a scale of rarity rather than a separate category.
Rarity, meaning, and patterns: one hundred sixes on a die
The speaker explains that getting the number five a hundred times in die throws and getting some other random-looking sequence have the same probability, but the repeated sequence is perceived as special and therefore objectively raises suspicion that the die is not fair. He argues that the fact that a certain pattern is “special in my eyes” can still justify objective conclusions about the world, such as inferring unfairness. He rejects the claim that the amazement is merely psychological, and presents this as part of the tricky relationship between judgments of uniqueness and statistical inference.
The question of perfection and self-perfection, Rabbi Kook, the Jewish people, and the seven Noahide commandments
At the end, a question is raised about “perfection and self-perfection” in the writings of Rabbi Kook, and about the difficulty of saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, is somehow “affected” by human action, and also about why revelation and mission are focused on Israel rather than on the whole world. The answer given is that the whole world has tasks and they are distributed, like the division between priests and Israelites, and that the nations of the world also received a task and the seven Noahide commandments, and it is even said that the message was already conveyed from Adam and Noah, but that their chain of transmission was partly “broken.” It is further said that Christianity and Islam received from Mount Sinai a moral core of “being a decent human being,” and that the question of their additions is a different discussion. The speaker says he does not see any principled difficulty in accepting the idea of self-perfection without being a kabbalist, and suggests that “Give strength to God” fits together with the idea of perfection and self-perfection, though the discussion closes with the point that this requires a great deal of thought.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I finished talking about the testimony argument, and I want to sharpen a bit one of the main points I wanted to draw from there: when we talk about the question of how plausible it is that a miracle occurred, for example—which is Hume’s topic—we are not talking in terms of probability but in terms of plausibility. And sometimes the argument is presented in such a way that two possibilities are set up against each other: either there was a miracle and the chain is reliable, or there was no miracle and the chain of transmission got corrupted. And then people talk about what the odds are that there was a miracle—zero—and what the odds are that the chain got corrupted—something small, but still something—and therefore it’s preferable to choose the second option. When I say, “what are the chances that a miracle will happen,” that’s a misleading expression. The chance that a miracle will happen is not something you can really calculate or assign some number to that would represent the chance that a miracle will happen. It’s really some kind of plausibility assessment. It doesn’t even boil down to a number; you can just say it’s very, very implausible. And so this argument is not really a probabilistic argument, the way it is often presented, but rather an argument that deals in terms of plausibility. And many times, when we talk about these kinds of things, we’re really using the language of probability while actually meaning considerations of plausibility. For example, take the physicotheological argument—the argument that proves the existence of God from the complexity of the world. I don’t want to get into the details here, but behind it there probably sits some claim about the laws of nature. The question is: what are the chances that the laws of nature would be such as to allow the development of life, or the existence of life? Now when I look at that question, I say to myself: this seems completely probabilistic. Meaning, let’s say we talk about the values of the constants in physics—that’s often what represents this question. Suppose we have several basic constants in physics: the speed of light, the gravitational constant, Coulomb’s constant, the dielectric coefficient, all kinds of things, dielectric constant and so on. It’s a collection of certain constants, certain numerical values, that get inserted into the laws of physics. Now it turns out that if the values of those constants, or some of them, had been a bit different, our whole world basically could not have existed. In other words, life could not have formed, life could not have survived—not only formed—and there could not have been biology at all. We would have been left only with physics and maybe chemistry. And so the claim is that the fact that the values of the constants are what they are is what allows life to exist. Then the question arises: what are the chances that the values of the constants came about arbitrarily, without a guiding hand? Because these are very, very special values, and the chance that they arose arbitrarily is negligible, so there must be someone who created the values of the constants. Behind this there basically stands—plus, whatever, approximately. So what are the chances of that exact number? That the speed of light would be exactly that precise number? So assuming the speed of light could take any value from zero to infinity, the chance that it would be exactly that value is zero. And of course if I’m talking about all the values of the constants, then even more so. But let’s talk about one constant.
[Speaker B] At this moment it’s just a given.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I can’t hear.
[Speaker B] At this moment it’s a given, it’s not probability.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, at this moment it’s a given?
[Speaker B] Yes, you’re asking how probable—the probability of the speed of light—right now it’s a fact, it’s a given, it’s a certain measurement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, but I’m asking: in a world that was created, whose laws of nature were somehow chosen by lottery, what are the chances that you’d get exactly such a speed of light?
[Speaker B] But we have no way of knowing that, because all we have is a reality that can be tested and measured, and that’s it. That’s what we have.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but what we have before us is the result. It’s like saying: after I rolled a die and got, I don’t know what—I rolled a die ten times and got a sequence of ten numbers, right? Two, three, one, six, six—a sequence of ten numbers. I can still ask: what are the chances that in ten rolls that sequence of numbers would come out?
[Speaker B] No, but here I’m a little not… You’re asking, Rabbi, what are the chances of something that is already factual. We have no way to measure it. When I roll dice, I do something, and here I have probability. In physical things that we measured and have, there can’t be anything else because there’s nothing else to choose from—it’s reality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it’s reality. The speed of light could have taken any value whatsoever. It could. Now I know that the speed of light has a certain value that I know, but I’m asking the question: when the speed of light was, so to speak, chosen—when it was decided what the speed of light would be in this world—what were the chances that the speed would be this one rather than something else? A completely legitimate question.
[Speaker B] The question is whether it can be asked at all. Why not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the difference between that and rolling a die?
[Speaker B] Because there’s nothing to choose from.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? It could be one, it could be two, it could be one over pi, it could be whatever you want. What’s the problem? Choose a number. It’s choosing from all numbers.
[Speaker B] It’s like asking about anything factual, real, when I have nothing to compare it to. Probability has to be between one thing and another.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I have all the possibilities: the speed of light could be one, two, three, four, five, or three hundred thousand. Now I ask: what are the chances that it would come out to three hundred thousand? You can ask that out of the full set of possible outcomes. There’s no problem asking that question. I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, obviously after it came out, it came out—what came out came out. But I’m asking: in the lottery that determined what came out, what were the chances that this is what would actually come out? Exactly like rolling a die.
[Speaker B] And that’s from zero to a hundred, in percentages, like everything?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, everything? Zero—why zero to a hundred? The probability is zero.
[Speaker B] That it comes out is probability zero, yes. But if I need to choose a speed, then it can be anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and therefore, since it can be anything, what are the chances it would be exactly this? One divided by the number of possible outcomes—that is, zero. Now what happens here is that on the probabilistic level, on the mathematical level, the question is not defined. It’s not defined because choosing an exact number—think, for example, about a lottery that chooses a number between zero and one, a real number between zero and one. So what is the probability of getting a certain number? The answer is actually: it’s not defined. It’s not defined because when we talk about a continuum, we have to talk about probability density and not probability. Meaning, when the outcomes are discrete, then each outcome has a probability. When we’re talking about a continuum, I’m talking about the density of the chance of getting the result in the interval between 0.41 and…
[Speaker C] It has to be within some range—you can’t be at one exact number, it has to be a range. I get it. It has to be a range.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying. The claim is that really I need to talk about probability density and not probability, and probability is always probability over a range, not over a number. Okay? So in fact, mathematically, this is not defined at all. You can’t really talk about—think about a situation where I need to pick a number between zero and one, okay? Now I picked a number and got, say, one-half. Exactly one-half. 0.500000 endlessly, right? Exactly one-half. Okay, so now I ask: what were the chances that this one-half would come out? Zero, right? Because the number of numbers between zero and one is infinite. But here it is—it came out! How can it be that an event that happened had probability zero of happening? That can’t be. If the probability was zero, it can’t happen. That’s just a way of presenting the mathematical problematic nature of this formulation, right? Meaning, it’s not a well-defined mathematical question. You can ask what are the chances that it comes out between 0.48 and 0.49. Then fine, there is some probability; if the distribution is uniform, then the probability is 0.01, that is, one percent. Okay? Meaning—
[Speaker D] But I didn’t understand anything at all. I have to say I understood nothing. It’s obvious that some number has to come out. And each number has probability zero. But that’s how it works—so what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not negligible, no. You stopped for a moment, and not for nothing. The probability is not negligible; the probability is zero.
[Speaker D] Okay, why? It’s one over infinity, I don’t know, that number over infinity. Zero. So? The fact is that obviously this is what will happen—some number will always be chosen. So there’s something unclear in the question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly! The claim is that mathematically this question is not defined. Okay?
[Speaker D] Fine. But when the Rabbi says there’s a range, why does that solve the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t solve any problem—on the contrary! I said the question is not mathematically defined. On the contrary, there is a problem—I didn’t solve it. So now, can I still talk about the question—so what, yes? The question “what are the chances that the speed of light would come out as it is?” On the mathematical level, it’s not defined. Meaning, the speed of light comes out some particular number; mathematically, to ask what are the chances that the number would be exactly this and not another number—that question is not defined. Does that knock down the argument? Meaning, do I then say: okay, so the physicotheological argument has collapsed, because there’s no way to calculate this probability, and therefore there’s nothing to say about the—about the—right?—about the fact that there’s a terribly small chance that the speed of light would be exactly like this, and therefore there is a God, because He made it, He fixed the speed of light. If the question is not mathematically defined, then you can’t even raise such an argument. And I claim that you can raise such an argument, despite the fact that the question is not mathematically defined. Because I’m not really talking about probability, I’m talking about plausibility. Talking about plausibility. Meaning, not “what are the chances”—or rather, sorry, chance is already in probabilistic terms—but is it plausible that the speed of light, if it were chosen in some arbitrary way, would come out exactly such that it allows life and biology and whatever else you like. And I claim that that is very, very implausible. I have no number to attach to it. Meaning, it’s not defined mathematically, I can’t talk here in terms of probability, but I can still raise considerations of plausibility. I’m asking a question of plausibility, not of probability. Or look at it from the atheist’s side. The atheist often says, when you tell him, look, what are the chances that a complex world arose by chance? He says: very, very small. But on the other hand, the chance that there is a God is even smaller. So if I have to choose—like I said with Sherlock Holmes—once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however implausible, is probably what is true. Okay? So here too the atheist says the same thing: true, the probability that something complex arose spontaneously is very small, but the probability that there is a God is even smaller, and therefore I still prefer that option. Now when you ask yourself what that means—how did he determine the probability that God exists or does not exist? Is there some space of possibilities? Yes, the space of possibilities is either God exists or God does not exist. Two possibilities. Now how do you assign a probability to each of those possibilities?
[Speaker B] That’s also impossible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. We have no way of assigning a number to such a possibility. There’s no way to do a calculation here. A probability calculation usually defines some event space. Say I roll a die. Suppose the die is fair. Then there are six possibilities for the outcome of a die roll. So if I say, if the die is fair, meaning the distribution is uniform, then the probability of getting a two is one-sixth. Because that’s one outcome out of six possibilities. So I have a space of possibilities from which I can weigh a certain number of possibilities divided by the total possibilities. So here there’s no way to talk about probabilities. Another way to ask it is this: what is the distribution for these outcomes, of God exists or does not exist? Once you give me the distribution, I’ll be able to answer the question of the probability that God exists or does not exist. But there are no distributions in the background here.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, it’s not a scientific question at all. Right. I mean, when we talk about biology, the development of the cell from a drop of water, it takes us to ten to the minus twenty-seven, something like that, I don’t remember exactly. God isn’t in the business at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where is probability here at all? No, no—again, you’re talking about whether this is a scientific question. That doesn’t interest me; this is not a scientific question. I’m claiming that it is not a well-defined question at the probabilistic level. It has nothing to do with whether it’s scientific or not.
[Speaker B] But that’s what I’m asking—where is probability here at all? In principle it can’t be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, but not because it isn’t scientific, rather because we have no way of calculating probabilities here. The problem is mathematical. The problem is not empirical, not scientific. It is mathematical. It’s simply not defined.
[Speaker C] You don’t have a sample space—what is your sample space? You don’t have one, you can’t define it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So in fact the objection to the physicotheological argument—the atheist who says, what are the chances there is a God—he too is really talking about plausibility, not about probability. A priori, it doesn’t seem plausible to me that there is a God. Okay, that’s his right. That’s how he relates to the claim that there is a God; he argues that he thinks this is an implausible claim. But obviously there is no probability calculation in the background. Meaning, it’s not that we’re talking here about probability—we’re talking about plausibility. That’s what I want to say.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, I just think that usually when the atheist says that, he doesn’t mean that it’s more plausible, or whatever. His argument is that since it really does seem, in terms of plausibility, very implausible that a world would arise with so many combinations of such highly implausible constants and all the complexity of the world and so on, he says that answering this with “God” is simply saying we don’t know the answer so we say a concept that supposedly puts our minds at ease. No, no, wait just a second, but I think the response to that is that when we say God in this context, at least, we mean that there is something that is a necessary existent. Not only that it is plausible, but we need to understand—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re dragging me into other issues that I don’t want to get into. I don’t accept at all the argument you just analyzed, but we’re not discussing the existence of God. I’m only using this here to illustrate a point. I’m not trying now to settle the question of whether the physicotheological argument is good or not good, or what the counterarguments against it are. I’m talking about a certain argument, a certain counterargument raised by atheists, simply in order to illustrate that this argument too is an argument that speaks in terms of plausibility and not in terms of probability. I didn’t say it’s the only argument, I didn’t say it’s a good argument or a bad argument. I’m only saying that it’s an argument that operates on the plane of plausibility and not on the plane of probability. If I want to discuss the physicotheological proof, we already dealt with that—it’s a long discussion in its own right, and I don’t want to get into it here. There are many more arguments that need to be clarified before one forms a position on that matter. But I only want to demonstrate through this argument and through the counterarguments to it that very often we use probabilistic language while actually meaning arguments of plausibility, not arguments of probability. You just need to know that these are two different things. I’ll nevertheless say one more thing because I think it does touch on the topic, what I’m about to say now. When we talk about the question of what are the chances that a complex world arose by chance, suppose the chance is zero. Okay, so now there are only two possibilities. One possibility is that it arose by chance, and one possibility is that it was created by someone or something. Okay? Now whether you call that something “God” or not is not what interests me.
[Speaker D] Let’s call it “something.” Okay? That’s not an answer. Rabbi, it’s not an answer to say that sentence, because either it was created by someone—that’s just an empty statement. What does “created by someone” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t said anything yet—let me finish. I haven’t given an answer to anything. I said there are two possibilities. That’s not an answer because there is no question here. I’m analyzing. There are two possibilities: either this world was created by something, or this world was created spontaneously, not by something.
[Speaker D] Those are the two possibilities. No, I disagree with that formulation. I disagree with the formulation. The formulation should not be either it was created by chance or it was created by someone, because that’s just an empty statement. Either it was created by chance, or it is a necessary existent. It is a necessary existent because it was created by God, who is a necessary existent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re mixing things together. If the world… if the world is a necessary existent, that means it always existed and was never created at all. I’m speaking on the assumption that—
[Speaker D] No, I don’t think so. Time isn’t relevant here, not relevant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The arguments about time are not relevant at all. I’m talking about a world that was created. The world was indeed created. That’s the assumption. Fine? There may perhaps be other possibilities, but that possibility—that the world was created—can be mapped onto one of two possibilities: either it was created by someone, or it was created spontaneously.
[Speaker D] No, I don’t think so. I think the correct formulation is either it was created by chance, which seems very implausible, or it is a necessary existent. And that’s what the concept means when I say God—the translation of that is that it is a necessary existent because it was created by God, who is a necessary existent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll repeat: you are raising a third possibility, that it was not created.
[Speaker D] No, I think the statement “created by someone” solves nothing. It’s just replacing one set of words with another.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t need to solve anything. I’m not trying to answer a question. I’m raising two possibilities, and no others.
[Speaker D] I’m not trying to answer any question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s no different from saying “created by chance” if you know nothing about it.
[Speaker D] It is different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Created by something and created by chance are two completely different things. No, why? When we know nothing about it, when we have no idea what it means— I don’t care that I know nothing about it. I’m asking whether it was created by something or not created by something. That’s all. I know nothing about it.
[Speaker D] You can’t say it was created
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] by something that I have no idea what it is and I don’t know what I mean by the word. No problem—there, I said it: created by something about which I have no knowledge whatsoever. There, I said it. But there is no content in that word.
[Speaker D] Beyond necessary existence, we have no content in the word.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shmuel, you’re insisting for no reason. You’re just insisting. Someone made footprints in the sand on the seashore, okay? Now I say: either someone walked here and made those footprints, or no one made those footprints. Two possibilities. Now I can’t say anything at all about whoever made those footprints. So what? Those are still the two possibilities. Either someone made them or no one made them. There is no third possibility. You can say they were always there, fine. But I’m speaking on the assumption that they were made, so either by chance or by someone. That’s all. Same thing with the world—there’s no problem saying that.
[Speaker D] The question just shifts to that one we were talking about as God who created the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That one as God who made the world—I never mentioned the word God. I asked whether this was done by something or someone, or whether it happened by itself. That’s all.
[Speaker D] And then we’ll ask how that someone was created.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll ask that afterward. But right now I’m asking this question. This question has two possibilities and no others. That’s it. And those two possibilities are well defined. There is no problem with defining them. And now I’m saying: if the probability that this arose spontaneously is small, then the probability that there was someone who created it—that is, that it was not spontaneous—is one minus that probability. That’s all. Therefore I think that even in explanatory terms, when the atheist comes and says “that sounds implausible to me,” I think that argument is incorrect. It is incorrect because you are creating here two possibilities whose probabilities do not add up to one. And that cannot be. If there are only two possibilities, then the sum of their probabilities is one. Meaning, assuming the world was created, then there are only two possibilities: either it was created by someone, or it was created spontaneously. And if the probability of its spontaneous formation is very, very small, then that means it was not created spontaneously—that’s one minus that probability. From there to move to God, and of course to give Him names and start describing Him, that’s a completely different matter. You’re right, that can be discussed separately. But the claim that there is something that created it is one minus the probability that there is no such thing that created it.
[Speaker D] I think that’s an empty statement. To say “created by someone” when we say nothing about him is to say nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I disagree with you on that point, but it really isn’t—
[Speaker D] You could say—instead of saying the same thing—you could say: the probability that this is chance is very implausible, and the other solution is whatever is in the second option. What’s there, I don’t know. Exactly, to that I would be willing to agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good, that’s what I said. So we agree.
[Speaker D] No, then you don’t need to call it God, you don’t need to say— I think we’re left with the same question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Third time—
[Speaker D] I’m already saying, I didn’t call it God. So it comes out that we’re left with the same question: how was the world created? We’re not left with any question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re left with a clear answer.
[Speaker D] That the world was not created by chance. Exactly. That’s also what Spinoza said. Right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think Spinoza said something else, but that’s another discussion, it doesn’t matter. That the world is a necessary existent. Necessary existence is not what I’m saying. The world is not a necessary existent, in my view. Okay, in any case let’s leave that. I only used this to illustrate the distinction between plausibility and probability, which is perhaps the main lesson I wanted to draw from this whole discussion of Hume’s argument. Now maybe one more important point is that very often, behind probability considerations, there stand plausibility considerations. So it’s true that it’s important to distinguish between probability and plausibility, but very often they appear together. For example, let me give an example. Suppose I roll a die. A fair die. Okay, and I say to myself: what does it mean, a fair die? A die built symmetrically, fine. Now I ask myself: what are the chances that the die will land on each face? One-sixth. How do I know that? Once I know that that’s the distribution, I can begin doing calculations. What are the chances it lands on one? What are the chances it lands on an even number? What are the chances the outcome is greater than or equal to five? All kinds of questions I can ask, given the distribution, assuming the distribution is uniform. But when I ask why this is the distribution—how do I know this is the distribution? How do I know the chance of each face is equal? Here there is no probabilistic answer, right? Probability begins after I’ve set the distribution. After I’ve set the distribution, now I do probabilistic calculations. But how do I know this is the distribution? That is a claim that comes either from plausibility, or intuition, or common sense, or whatever—but it is not a claim in probability. And so in the background of probabilistic calculations there very often sit considerations that are considerations of plausibility. It seems plausible to me that if the die is built symmetrically, then the chance of each face landing is one-sixth. Very plausible. But that is not a statement in probability. It’s an assumption which, once I assume it, allows me to start doing probabilistic calculations. Okay? So I’m just trying to say that we tend to assign great importance to probabilistic calculations and to look down a bit on plausibility considerations, but we should remember that in the background of probabilistic calculations there very often stand plausibility considerations. That’s what they rest on; from there onward I begin the calculations. The mathematics starts there. But the background for the mathematical calculation, the point from which it begins, begins from considerations of plausibility.
[Speaker C] And by the way, I didn’t understand how plausibility comes into rolling a die.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know the distribution is uniform in a fair die? That’s—
[Speaker C] That’s what defines it: all the faces are equal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “defines it”? Forget definitions. I have a die; a die is not a definition.
[Speaker C] You have a sample space that tells you each face can fall with probability one-sixth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know? What do you mean, that’s how it’s—
[Speaker C] defined.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know the probability of each face is one-sixth?
[Speaker C] Maybe I didn’t understand.
/div>
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you know about the die is that it’s built symmetrically. The weights are equal, the shape is equal—that’s what you know. A concrete die is in front of you, not a Platonic die that you define on the mathematical level. On the mathematical level, a fair die is defined as a die for which the probability of each face is equal.
[Speaker C] Okay, so I understand you. You’re talking to me about a concrete die. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This isn’t a question in mathematics; it’s a question in physics. Meaning, the question is: how do I know that this die has an equal chance of landing on each face? That’s a consideration of plausibility or common sense, yes—it’s not a probabilistic consideration. That’s the basis from which probabilistic calculation begins. After I know the distribution, then I can do calculations. And that’s often how it is—actually, it’s almost always like that, almost always. Of course, on the mathematical level I can talk about a die in the Platonic sense. A fair Platonic die is a die for which the probability of each face is one-sixth. Fine. Then I’m talking about some abstract concept that I defined; it’s not a claim about the world. I defined an abstract concept, and now I can discuss what will happen with it. But when I’m talking about the world, then I need to assume certain assumptions in order to model it on that Platonic case. And the assumption that it resembles that Platonic case is an assumption of common sense, of plausibility if you like. Okay?
A lot of times it’s very similar to what I’ve said more than once: that we give enormous credit to logical arguments, but we forget that a logical argument is always based on premises. And the premises—there is no logical argument that establishes them. Axioms, yes, the initial assumptions. There is no logical argument that establishes them. And therefore in the final analysis, logic can only move me from my intuitions, or from plausibility—what seems plausible to me—to conclusions that follow from that. But I will never have a logical basis for a factual claim. There is no factual claim that can be derived by logical means alone. Logic always derives certain claims from other claims, but the beginning of the journey always starts with some kind of common sense that tells me: these claims sound plausible to me, so I accept them as an axiom. And now let’s see what logic can do with them, what conclusions I can reach. Right?
Think about geometry. When I say that exactly one straight line passes through two points, or that two parallel lines do not meet—those are assumptions. Where do those assumptions come from? In mathematics you can say: what are you talking about? They’re not assumptions; they’re simply definitions of the space I’m dealing with. It’s a Platonic space defined such that exactly one straight line passes through two points and two parallels in it do not meet. That’s called Euclidean space, and it’s a mathematical concept. But when I come to apply it to reality in our world, then I will have to decide that this Platonic model correctly describes our reality. And that specific assumption is an assumption of plausibility, not of probability. Or of common sense and not of logic. And after I’ve assumed that assumption, I can derive conclusions with logical tools. Okay?
So therefore, just as logic begins from intuitions, from plausibilities, from basic assumptions grounded in plausibility, probabilistic calculation is the same thing. Probabilistic calculation also begins, essentially, from plausibility considerations that determine the distribution. And now let’s do probabilistic calculations. Okay?
[Speaker E] I didn’t understand what the difference is between common sense and reason, in logic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker E] Common sense isn’t logic?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course not. No. Logic is a set of rules that tell me how claims follow from prior claims.
[Speaker E] That’s also common sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not common sense, that’s logic. Common sense is what my intuition tells me. My intuition may be wrong. Logic cannot be wrong. Logic cannot be mistaken.
[Speaker D] Can the Rabbi explain that more? Because the Rabbi did say that the basic assumptions of logic itself are also basically intuitive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the basic assumptions of logic—the basic assumptions of a logical argument. Logic is the tool I use to derive a conclusion from the premises. The argument has premises. Say: all human beings are mortal; Socrates is a human being; conclusion: Socrates is mortal. So “all human beings are mortal” and “Socrates is a human being” are the premises of the argument. And the conclusion is that Socrates is mortal. The logic here is the transition from the premises to the conclusion.
[Speaker D] And how does the Rabbi know that this is true?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do I know? It’s just evident.
[Speaker E] My common sense…
[Speaker D] Suppose I could somehow manipulate things through genetic engineering and create a copy of the Rabbi, or of another person, who thinks differently from the laws of logic—what… how could I say to him, look, this…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’d be creating a person who lives in contradictions. You can create lots of mutations—so what does that prove?
[Speaker D] No, but how do we really know they’re true? Because in fact, as I said, I could easily create a living creature…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—how do I know? What kind of answer are you expecting? If I give you some other principle by virtue of which I know it, you’ll ask about that principle too.
[Speaker D] No, I’m not expecting that. I’m expecting us to say that in the end it’s really just the feeling we have, and in truth we can’t know that it’s absolute truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not a feeling, and it’s not even intuition.
[Speaker D] So what is it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s something true in and of itself, inherently.
[Speaker D] And if someone is standing next to the Rabbi who was genetically engineered to feel differently, and he says, what are you talking about…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, the fact is that there isn’t anyone standing here like that. The fact is, there isn’t. Because we all think this way. So you’re creating some creature that lives in contradictions, and then asking me questions on that basis? There is no such creature, and it’s a contradiction.
[Speaker D] So many of us live in contradictions, and all kinds of talk about dialectics and inner contradictions and postmodernism and all that…
[Speaker B] No,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Almost nobody lives in contradictions; I doubt there’s anyone at all. What you call contradictions are difficulties, not contradictions. Contradictions on the logical level are something very strict. And many times when we talk about contradictions, if we dig into it carefully, you’ll see that we’re not talking about a logical contradiction. We’re talking about some difficulty or other, but not a logical contradiction.
[Speaker E] Can there be a dispute about common sense? I mean, can my common sense be different from your common sense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. Why not? And it happens here all the time—what do you mean?
[Speaker E] It seems to me that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One person’s common sense says there ought to be equality between women and men, and another person’s common sense says there ought not to be equality. Someone else says his common sense tells him that the definition of women and men is a stable, unequivocal biological definition, and someone else says nonsense—men and women are a matter of social construction.
[Speaker F] That’s more values, isn’t it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Values too are… again, unless you say that values are not claims you stand behind but just feelings—which I don’t want to wake that demon up again. But I regard values as things that are true in a certain sense.
[Speaker B] I think there’s a mistake here between common sense and correct thinking. Because Aristotle, in his Organon, in the section on… Aristotelian logic, writes that logic is a science, the science of the forms and methods and laws of correct thinking. Correct thinking is not necessarily common sense. Correct thinking means building, on the basis of the premises, one thing that follows from another. Right. It has nothing to do with common sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker B] No, I agree with the Rabbi, yes—just, there’s an argument here between two things that aren’t the same thing; they’re different terms.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, you can call whatever you want common sense, but I’m still saying—leave the semantics aside. On the substantive level, there are two types of insights here. A logical insight is the derivation of a claim from prior claims, and I don’t call that common sense. Call it common sense if you want, call it whatever you want, but you can’t disagree with it. Meaning, it’s something completely certain. The “if… then…” is certain—not the “then,” not the conclusion, but the derivation of the conclusion from the premises is certain. You can’t disagree with it. Someone who disagrees with it is simply confused.
By contrast, there are claims that I think are true, that my common sense tells me are true, but someone else can say no. Meaning, you don’t have to think that way. One of us is wrong, but I have no way to show you that you’re simply confused—that is, that you’re living in contradiction. You think differently. One person thinks things can happen without a cause; I think things cannot happen without a cause. Okay, I don’t have some kind of… it’s not a logical necessity. I can’t tell the person, listen, if you think otherwise then you’re just confused, meaning you’re living in contradiction. No, he’s not living in contradiction; he has a different common sense that says something different from my common sense. One of the two of us may not be so “straight,” maybe, but never mind.
[Speaker D] But why can’t there be a creature that thinks differently about the laws of logic?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There could be, there could be such a being—he just wouldn’t be thinking. He wouldn’t be thinking; he’d be imagining. To think differently from the laws of logic is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing. There could be someone who imagines something else because he’s delusional. Fine—there can be various pathologies, but there’s no point dealing with that; it’s pathology.
[Speaker D] And the Rabbi understands that he can never know for sure that he himself isn’t delusional.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m sorry, but what can I do?
[Speaker B] No, logic isn’t a question of being delusional or not delusional. It’s justified consistency—one thing follows from another. It has nothing to do with… there’s no issue of justice here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine. Shmuel wants to argue that the logical rule itself—the fact that I assume the logical rule is correct—that too is some kind of common-sense assumption. Okay.
[Speaker B] Yes, but very often the logic we use emerges out of the empirical situation: we see something, and from that we derive logic. Our logic…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Observations can be a didactic tool, but logic is not built on observation. It may be that didactically I can demonstrate logical principles to you through observations. That’s only didactic; it’s not essential. It exists independently of observation.
[Speaker B] Fine, let’s get back—we’ve drifted pretty far.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to finish this point for a moment. Meaning, I finished the issue of plausibility versus probability; that’s really the basic lesson I was talking about. I just owe you one more answer that I said I’d give in this class, and that is: after I explained that David Hume is wrong and that testimony about miracles is in fact testimony that can be accepted, then of course the question arises: okay, fine, so do I accept every claim made by people who report miracles—open miracles that they discovered—that Ali Baba and the forty thieves healed them by saying cock-a-doodle-doo, or all kinds of things like that? Anyone who knows me, I assume, knows that I’m not inclined to accept such reports. And the question is how that fits with the defense I gave of our tradition against Hume’s attack. Seemingly Hume presents this rationalistic position that refuses to accept fairy tales about miracles, and I tried to defend the claim about the tradition that transmits miracles to us. So the question is: then why am I not willing to accept all kinds of reports about miracles today as well, or at least why am I inclined not to accept them?
[Speaker D] Rabbi, can I add something to that? After all, we all see with our own eyes all day long that as the chain gets longer, even with just one added link some distortion already occurs, and sometimes a significant distortion, and the longer the chain gets, the more the connection between the source and the end becomes unrecognizable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We spoke about broken telephone, yes.
[Speaker D] Broken telephone is even when it’s short, but all the more so when it’s three thousand years, and then to say that on this basis one can build faith…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are many stages, yes, okay.
[Speaker D] Right, so you answered that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s why I’m saying: on the one hand, no—about that I spoke in the previous class, I won’t go back to it here, why I think that… that objection is not a necessary objection. But on the other hand, if that’s so, then why do I behave just like Hume—speaking about myself now—why do I behave just like Hume toward all kinds of miracle reports that come to me today? It seems inconsistent. So I want to say a few things.
First, the claim that I don’t believe such reports about miracles—I really do not reject them categorically the way Hume does. It could be. I’m only saying that, from my experience—and again, I do rely on experience, I do believe in induction, unlike Hume—from my experience, usually reports of this kind are reports where you can find the bug in them. If you check well, you’ll find that there’s a bug there, some mistakes, deceptions, and the like. Therefore I tend to cast doubt on these reports, but I cannot determine categorically that they are false. I never determine categorically that they are false. I just require a fairly high evidentiary threshold in order to be convinced that there’s something real to them, and usually I don’t get that. Meaning, the people who bring me such a report usually do not meet that evidentiary threshold.
So first of all I want to say that on the substantive level, it really is not correct to hold a position that categorically rejects the possibility of such a report. That is indeed a conclusion I draw from the discussion with Hume. On the other hand, I will still tend not to accept it. Meaning, they would have to convince me very, very strongly before I would accept such a report.
And here I want to return to a point we actually already touched on in previous classes. I’ll remind you of the claim I mentioned at the end of the previous class, which Hume himself raises, actually—that reports of miracles always come from primitive societies. Educated societies, societies used to thinking in a systematic, scientific, orderly way and so on—you won’t hear reports of miracles there. And Hume presents this as an argument against those traditions, because it basically means: these are people who are easy to fool, people who swallow nonsense easily, and therefore the fact that the reports come from such societies is to the detriment of the tradition that transmits to us the existence of miracles.
And I said about that: this is true in principle, but one has to remember that educated societies are not willing to accept reports of miracles, and in that sense they block themselves off from reports of miracles. I read that passage from The Wizard of Oz, if you remember, that in civilized lands the witches did not survive. Of course, “did not survive” means they are not willing to accept reports of the existence of witches. So therefore they cannot transmit such traditions. In that sense there is an advantage to a primitive society, because if by chance a miracle occurs, only a primitive society will accept its existence. An educated society will not accept its existence. Because a primitive society is willing to accept the possibility of such a thing, while an educated society says no, this does not fit the laws of nature or science, and therefore it probably did not happen. Hume’s argument is clear: it must have been a distortion, because a miracle is utterly implausible.
[Speaker E] But if an educated society receives direct testimony—not hearsay, not something passed through several vessels, several ears—but direct testimony from someone who saw it with his own eyes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said—that claim came up in the previous class and I answered it. Same thing. In the end, Hume’s argument—someone who accepts Hume’s argument basically says: suppose I saw a miracle with my own eyes. There are two possibilities: either there was a miracle here, which according to Hume is impossible, or something in my seeing got distorted—I made some mistake, I don’t know, I didn’t perceive it correctly.
[Speaker B] Maybe there’s also a third option: maybe the miracle we’re talking about isn’t a miracle according to one person’s understanding, and is a miracle according to someone else. That’s what I wanted to ask, by the way—what is a miracle in your view?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. There can always be a case where it’s a natural phenomenon, except that I don’t yet know all the laws of nature. It could be that I’ll learn later, and then I’ll understand that in fact this phenomenon is a natural one. I brought the case of jaundice as an example of that.
[Speaker B] No, no, I’m asking just in principle—what in your opinion…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A miracle is something that goes against the laws of nature.
[Speaker B] I’ll ask you a very simple question. A person is terminally ill in a hospital, he has only days left to live. Two or three months later, suddenly he recovers. Okay. The overwhelming majority of people will say: that’s a miracle. Even the doctors say: that’s a miracle. Fine—you say that’s not a miracle. Obviously not. But the way one looks at this thing… for you it’s not a miracle; for others it is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s just…
[Speaker B] A matter of definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That thing is very, very improbable. But very, very improbable is not against the laws of nature.
[Speaker B] Right, it never gets to that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Something very, very improbable can happen. That’s all. I think I once brought Rabbi Shach’s letter about the Entebbe operation. Remember that? I think I spoke about it once.
[Speaker B] Yes, once—that was how long ago…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. He says there that a very, very improbable thing can happen—so that’s not a miracle. There is spontaneous healing. I think Shmuel can probably tell us about that better than I can. There are cases of spontaneous healing—it can happen, it’s a natural thing. Maybe we don’t understand it, or maybe we don’t encounter it often, but it’s something that can happen. It’s not—when I speak about a miracle, I mean something against the laws of nature. Not something rare or unlikely, but something impossible, something that the laws of nature forbid. What?
[Speaker B] Do you know Yechiel Yoshpeh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yechiel what? Yoshpeh.
[Speaker B] From Safed, from Ariel College.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know him.
[Speaker B] He’s also an engineer, and he deals with… he once told me he was in Egypt, in Sinai, during the war, and he says the Egyptians burned them with napalm. He says, fire passed over us; he says, it’s truly a miracle that we all stayed alive. To be sure, none of them became religious because of it, but in principle, yes, there is such a reality, that something happens.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. It could be that they did not correctly grasp the situation. I told you, I tend to cast doubt on such things. Okay, never mind. In any case, the claim I want to make is that… what’s happening here? Wait. The claim I want to make, basically, is that it’s true that only a primitive society will be willing to accept a report of a miracle, okay? And therefore it’s clear why reports of miracles come only from primitive societies. So Hume is not right that the fact that it comes from primitive societies means it isn’t true. The fact that it comes from primitive societies is almost a tautology, because it cannot come from an educated society, since it won’t accept such a report.
But—and here is the important point—the fact is that miracles are very unlikely to occur, yes? There is a very low probability that miracles happen, right? Now this is really parallel, if you remember, to Münchausen syndrome, what we discussed there about Kahneman’s fallacies, yes—the representativeness fallacies. Meaning, the claim here is that we’re dealing with a phenomenon that is very rare, if it exists at all: miracles.
Now it’s true that if it happened, the report will only come through a primitive society. An educated society cannot bring it to me. But still, the probability that this thing occurs is negligible, independently of the reports for the moment, okay? If I accept that, then notice what happens. Basically, there is a prior and a posterior here. The prior probability of the occurrence of a miracle is very, very small. But once the miracle happened, the conditional probability—yes, given that a miracle occurred—then an educated society will not pass the information to me, it will err, and the primitive society will be right. Does that mean that when a primitive society reports a miracle to me, the miracle probably happened? The answer is no, because the occurrence of a miracle is very, very rare.
It’s true that in the conditional probability, given that a miracle occurred, the report will come through a primitive society, and there it will be more correct than the non-primitive society. But on the other hand, a primitive society will also often pass on reports of miracles that never happened at all. And after all, the chance that a miracle occurs is very, very small, right? So now when a report comes to me from a primitive society about a miracle, there are two possibilities: either the miracle happened and indeed a primitive society was willing to accept it, while an educated society would not, and therefore it reports it; second possibility, no miracle happened, and the primitive society swallowed nonsense, and therefore they report a miracle to me.
Among reports of miracles coming from a primitive society, most of the reports are false—but there are reports that are true, or at least there can be reports that are true. Let me remind you perhaps of the calculation we did there, yes? I asked you again about medical diagnostics: you go for a test for a rare disease, and the quality of the test is 1% error, fine? There is a 1% error of…
[Speaker C] You’ll need to calculate Bayes’ theorem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bayes, right—also depending on…
[Speaker C] The prevalence of the disease.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. This is Bayes’ theorem; it’s basically Kahneman’s point, representativeness, because people’s intuitive tendency is to say the probability is 99% that you’re sick. But that’s not true. Because the probability depends on how rare the disease is. Let’s assume this disease has a prevalence of one in a million. Fine? Only one in a million are sick. Now suppose all one million take this test, and there is a 1% error, right? Then ten thousand will come out sick. Of them, how many are actually sick? One. Right? There are a million people, the prevalence of the disease, the frequency of the disease, is one in a million, so out of the million people in the country, one person has this disease.
Okay, now I give all one million the test. Since there is a 1% error, then ten thousand will come out sick even though they are healthy, right? And the one sick person, the test probably detected him correctly. So among these ten thousand, there is probably one who is actually sick. Okay, I’m ignoring for the moment the chance of error even regarding that one; there is also such a chance, but it’s negligible. Okay, so basically I have ten thousand people who came out sick, of whom only one is actually sick. So when you ask me, “If I tested positive, what is the probability that I’m really sick?”—one in ten thousand. Even though the test is 99% reliable.
And why is that? Because the test is 99% reliable, and once I am sick there is a 99% chance that the test will indeed detect that I am sick. But if the test says I’m sick and I ask, “What is the probability that I’m actually sick?”—one in ten thousand. Because there is a difference between asking, “Assuming I’m sick, what is the probability that the test will say I’m sick?”—yes, that is the conditional probability of A given B—but the question I’m asking is the reverse question, of B given A. Because I say, “The test said I’m sick; what is the probability that I’m really sick?” That’s the reverse conditional probability, and that already depends on the prior. Yes, it depends on the a priori probability, on the prevalence of the disease, the chance of being sick regardless of the test.
Okay, same thing here. The chance that a miracle occurred is very, very small. Once a miracle occurred, the primitive society will transmit it to me with high reliability, and the non-primitive society will err. But in most cases no miracle occurs, and since the primitive society makes mistakes, then in many cases where no miracle occurred the primitive society will report to me that a miracle occurred. Therefore, if the primitive society told me that a miracle occurred, the chance that a miracle really occurred is negligible.
The argument I made against Hume does not really defeat Hume’s own argument. Do you understand what I’m saying? Hume’s argument says, “If a primitive society transmits it, that shows you there are no miracles.” That’s not true. It’s not true. Because precisely due to his own approach, only primitive societies can transmit this information to me. But since independently of Hume I also assume that a miracle is something very implausible, a very rare phenomenon, then because of that, the probabilistic calculation—if a primitive society reported a miracle to me, what is the chance that a miracle really occurred?—the result is very small. By contrast, assuming that a miracle occurred, what is the chance that the primitive society will report it? Almost one. So P of A given B is not the same as P of B given A; it depends on what P of A itself is. What is the probability of the disease, or what is the probability of the miracle—what the prior is, as it’s called in… what do you want? What? I can’t hear. Ah, okay.
So what I really want to say is that the story is much more complicated. Because in fact, the trust I place in the primitive society will depend on the prior I assign to miracles. And since Hume says, “There is no chance a miracle will occur,” he does not believe the report of the primitive society—and he is right. But the claim that only primitive societies transmit this report to me is not itself an argument. That’s not correct. Because assuming a miracle occurs, it will come to me only through a primitive society. Okay.
Now if I come back to us, then I say the following. If today I get a report from a person in whose thinking I do not have great confidence, and he says to me, “Look, a miracle happened to me, I don’t know, such-and-such,” then I tend not to believe him. Why? After all, only such people can report miracles to me, because intelligent and educated people won’t report it as a miracle. Right—but I still have some prior that says miracles are implausible. A prior. I think miracles are implausible. And therefore I won’t accept that report.
So you’ll ask: then why do I accept the report of the revelation at Mount Sinai? The answer is that if I were really building the argument—and this takes me back to other series I gave—if I were building the argument for Mount Sinai on the Kuzari argument, that a father doesn’t lie to his son, and so on, then the trust in the chain of transmission—that’s a very problematic argument. A very problematic argument. But that is not the only basis for accepting the report of the revelation at Mount Sinai.
First of all, I make a philosophical consideration that says: if there is a God who created the world, then He probably wants something from it, otherwise He would not have created it. If He wants something from it, how will we know what He wants? Therefore it seems plausible to me that He would reveal Himself. And again, I don’t want to get into arguments about this, because I’m using it only as an illustration of the mode of thinking. I don’t want to get into the argument of whether there was a Sinai revelation or not; I’m just trying to show a kind of consideration here, yes?
So since I expect in advance that the Holy One, blessed be He, will reveal Himself, then in fact my prior is not small. On the contrary: from my perspective it is very plausible that the Holy One, blessed be He, will reveal Himself. And again, if a report comes from a primitive society that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to them, then the prior is not small, so I have no reason not to accept it. Hume assumes that the prior is very, very small—that is, there is no chance that God will reveal Himself. So the fact that a primitive society reports to me that He did reveal Himself—that is probably just nonsense they swallowed. But my prior is different. I claim that there is a chance God will reveal Himself; in fact, not only is there a chance, it is very plausible that He will reveal Himself. And because of that, when a report reaches me that God revealed Himself, I accept it. That’s the difference.
[Speaker B] And what about prophecy? What? What about prophecy?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about prophecy?
[Speaker B] Prophecy is also a miracle. The Holy One, blessed be He, comes down to a person and speaks to him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. The same Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us at Mount Sinai says that the Holy One, blessed be He, also gives prophecy to prophets. If it weren’t for that, I really wouldn’t accept it.
[Speaker B] Meaning, but in principle you don’t classify this as a miracle. You classify it as some kind of way that things are. Meaning… that’s already a question of whether you call it a miracle or not; that’s semantics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Call it this, call it that—what difference does it make? In the end it’s semantics. I’m saying that if the Torah tells me that something of this kind will happen, and I trust the Torah, that increases the prior. Once it increases the prior, and now people tell me, yes, there was a prophet, we saw him, and he prophesied all kinds of things, and so on and so on—if my prior were negligible, I would not accept it. But if my prior is not negligible, then I have no problem. The fact that it comes from a primitive society doesn’t bother me; it’s exactly what one would expect. It can only come from a primitive society. It won’t come from a non-primitive society.
You see again—this is why I gave the introduction summarizing the previous class. What is this prior? This prior is plausibility, not probability. I have a plausibility judgment that miracles probably don’t happen, but on the other hand I have a plausibility judgment that God would reveal Himself. This is not a standard miracle. Any other miracle, maybe I’d say something else. But that God would reveal Himself—that actually seems very plausible to me. So my prior is different, and now the probabilistic calculation begins. And now, in the probabilistic calculation, it actually comes out as something acceptable. But it all started from the fact that my prior is different from Hume’s prior. Because I think it is plausible that God would reveal Himself, whereas from his perspective the revelation of God is like a miracle, and a miracle is something implausible. He has a very, very small prior.
You see that the outcome of the probabilistic calculation begins and ends with the point of departure—what I called the prior, yes, the initial unconditional probability, before I have the additional data, the chain of transmission. Okay?
[Speaker G] Sorry, Rabbi, and you base that prior on the fact that you arrived at the conclusion that you believe the world was created by someone. Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. And therefore I say—in the book The First Existing Being I spoke about this—that the Kuzari argument, which everyone waves around as a strong argument, is in my view a very doubtful argument. And David Hume’s attack targets exactly that. Because the Kuzari argument is precisely an argument from testimony, yes—that we received it from father to son, father to son, father to son, so apparently it’s true. And I say that here Hume’s attack is a correct attack. But it is a correct attack only against someone who accepts the claim about the Sinai revelation solely on the basis of the chain of transmission.
But if I have a different prior, then the chain of transmission is perfectly fine because the fact that such a chain of transmission brings it to me, and that educated societies do not accept such things, is not a difficulty in any way. On the contrary, only primitive societies can transmit such a thing to me.
So in a certain sense this is disappointing, because rational arguments always seem much more attractive to us. Logic, probabilistic calculation—these are tools in which we have great confidence. But always, or almost always, probabilistic calculation or a logical argument begins from some priors, some starting points, some basic assumptions—and they determine the final outcome in the end. The calculation is only how one gets to the result, but everything is already inside the basic assumptions.
Yes, like in the Socratic argument: if you say all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, conclusion: Socrates is mortal—you understand that the conclusion that Socrates is mortal is actually contained within the premises. After all, if you say all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, then you’ve basically already said that Socrates is mortal; it’s contained in the premises. Logic merely revealed to you that this conclusion is already in the premises. Therefore the core, the main thing that really underlies the conclusion that Socrates is mortal, is the premises, not the logic. The logic is trivial, obvious. If those are the premises, then I can derive the conclusion. The important question is whether those premises are actually true. The problem is almost never in the logic. The problem is in the assumptions on which the logic rests.
And therefore I also have no problem with Hume’s argument. Hume’s argument is correct—plausibility-wise, probabilistically, whatever, it’s a correct argument—assuming that your prior is that revelation has zero chance. It is utterly implausible. But since my prior is different, Hume’s argument falls immediately.
Okay, so that’s it regarding Hume’s argument from testimony and why I also tend to relate like Hume to reports of miracles. Maybe I’ll remind you of one more point that came up in the previous class, because I see we don’t have much time left and I wanted to start a new topic already. We’ll see. But what?
[Speaker D] Rabbi, I don’t think the Rabbi defined a miracle as something that departs from nature, right? I don’t think that’s the core of the matter, and therefore I don’t think it makes sense to understand it that way at all. I know that’s how people understand it, but I don’t think it’s correct. If something were to happen that contradicted the laws of nature but had no meaning—there’s no narrative, it does nothing in our lives or in reality, and it contains no intentional content, meaning there’s some thought there to do good, to do evil, to do something—just something happened that departs from the laws of nature. I don’t think any human being, primitive or non-primitive, would build anything on that, would call it a miracle and interpret it as having some faith-related meaning or otherwise. What difference does it make?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then don’t call it a miracle and don’t interpret it. I’m asking whether it happened.
[Speaker D] No, I’m saying that in human culture the content of miracle, the concept of miracle and its meaning, its influence in all cultures, is not because of the departure from the laws of nature but because of the content.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forget the word “miracle.” Let’s give up the word “miracle.” Fine? An event that departs from the laws of nature.
[Speaker D] Again, if it has no meaning, if it had no impact, if it gave nothing…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m only asking whether it happened, that’s all.
[Speaker D] Just—if the Rabbi were, if some person in the world saw something that departed from the laws of nature, would he stand there, bow, and thank whoever is above? No. He’d say: I don’t understand something. What are the laws of nature?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something I understood.
[Speaker D] He wouldn’t bow; he’d be astonished.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’d be astonished and say: let’s investigate. And now he tells me about it?
[Speaker D] And now he tells about it, so you say to him…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Go investigate it?
[Speaker D] Go investigate it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, then we’re returning to topics we discussed in the previous class; I agree. Everything’s fine. I’m just saying that the discussion I’m engaged in is not in the religious context. The religious context is only the medium through which we’re speaking. The discussion I’m engaged in is the question whether to believe that it happened. Leave aside what it means that it happened—whether it means God, whether it means I don’t know what. No. I’m simply asking: suppose a report arrives that this phone stood in the air and did not fall to the ground. Fine? Nobody is claiming someone did it; there are no prophets here, no magicians, no God, nothing. Just a report about something that departed from the laws of nature. Now the question is whether I accept such a report.
[Speaker D] What I meant was to hint at and maybe understand once again exactly what Hume says about the deal between primitive groups and non-primitive groups. Primitive groups—I don’t think that’s even the right word. These are groups where a person—when there is a society that wants to see God in every situation, then it sees miracles. What are miracles? It sees providence in everything, like Nachmanides says. And if a society is more… it doesn’t want to see God, and that frightens it, and it prefers not to see it, it prefers to paint it in terms of natural law…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Natural, then it won’t see it. That’s all. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the frequency, or non-frequency, of the event. And it’s not…
[Speaker D] It has nothing to do with the frequency of the event.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The difference between this society and that one is exactly in the assessment of how frequent the event is. We all saw it. Someone who thinks God is involved here at every step is basically saying: my prior for miracles is not low. There is a high prior here.
[Speaker D] What I want to say is that if you see an event that appears to us to depart from the laws of nature, and it is devoid of any content connected to human life, then no society—primitive or non-primitive—will relate to it, won’t attach to it the concept of miracle. It will attach to it the concept of wonder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what do I care—then don’t call it a miracle, call it a deviation from the laws of nature. What do I care? I’m not talking about a miracle in its religious connotation. I’m talking about the question of whether I can accept a report about an event that deviates from the laws of nature. I don’t care what its meaning is, who did it, what it means that it happened. Nothing. Someone simply told me that the phone was standing in midair. Now the question is whether to accept that or not. That’s all. This is a discussion in Jewish law, in the legal rules of evidence. Okay? It’s not connected right now to the religious aspect and so on. That may be a consequence, but it’s not the focus of the discussion. I’m conducting the probabilistic or epistemic discussion. That’s really what matters. Maybe just one more point I wanted to mention, which I also talked about last time. There’s really something problematic in the distinction I made between a very improbable event and an event that deviates from the laws of nature. Because the laws of nature themselves are the result of generalizations we make, and you can’t say that I’m one hundred percent sure those laws are correct. So even something that deviates from the laws of nature is ultimately just an improbable event. That’s all. So in essence there’s no real difference between those two things. Okay? Maimonides.
[Speaker B] Maimonides says—right, that’s what I said in the previous class—Maimonides calls the laws of nature a miracle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, not important. But I’m saying—not, I’m speaking right now, leave aside whether you call the laws of nature a miracle. No, the laws of nature are not a miracle. But I’m saying that the very fact that these are the laws of nature is itself not certain from my point of view. When I see this phone standing in midair, it could very well just tell me that the law of gravity is not an exact law. Meaning: that’s not the correct law. The correct law is something a bit different, which I didn’t know until now. And therefore it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a deviation from the laws of nature here. After all, I arrived at the laws of nature themselves through scientific induction, and that’s not a certain method. So there really is no true difference between a very improbable event and an event that deviates from the laws of nature. Except that we have some very great confidence—one can argue whether it’s justified or not—we have very great confidence in the laws of nature. For us it looks like something that really is one hundred percent. But the truth is that it isn’t. Meaning, even the laws of nature are not one hundred percent. So there really is no possibility of talking about things that are above nature. It’s not well defined, at least not empirically, because it can always be that further research will reveal to you that the laws of nature also allow for this event—you just didn’t have all the information. That’s all.
[Speaker B] I heard about a person who wanted to refute the laws of gravity by using birds as an example. There are such people too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. Or you know what, another example I gave last time was an eclipse or something like that—various rare astronomical events. Okay? So if someone reports to me that such an event occurred, in principle I’m supposed not to believe him, because in my life I’ve never seen it, and neither did my ancestors. It happens once every few thousand years. We haven’t seen it, so apparently it didn’t happen. But in the end, when we understand it, when we find some logical or scientific explanation for it or something like that, then we do accept it. Meaning, the fact that a certain event is rare does not mean either that it is supernatural or that it is impossible. Sometimes it will even turn out to be a natural event if we continue investigating the laws of nature beyond what we know today. Therefore I take this distinction between a rare event and an event that deviates from the laws of nature with a grain of salt. The laws of nature are nothing more than generalizations we made on the basis of cases we’ve seen. And generalizations, like all generalizations—David Hume already pointed this out—their result is not certain. Meaning, it could definitely be wrong. So in the end there’s a very delicate interplay here between my assumptions and the result of my calculation. And I think that on this point David Hume made a certain assumption that people don’t notice, and therefore they get terribly excited about his argument. But in the end he assumed what he needed to prove. The moment you assume that revelation is impossible, the calculation will show you that it’s impossible. And if you assume that it’s possible, the calculation will show you that it’s possible.
[Speaker D] So that means the Rabbi just described in exactly the language I meant: if you see something that deviates from the laws of nature, then you simply have some gap in your knowledge, and go work on filling it. Why would a person suddenly insert into it the content of a miracle, and now we have to change the whole paradigm about all reality and its source and whatnot? All you saw was something unusual. Okay, so what? After all, you don’t know—nobody claims to know all of reality—so here’s one more thing. I don’t understand. The Rabbi just described that if you see something rare, then the distance between it and a miracle doesn’t really exist, because maybe I simply don’t know, and the laws of gravity aren’t exact, and so on. So how can one speak about a miracle at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, you really can’t speak about a miracle at the philosophical level. The concept of miracle is not defined. Exactly. Right, because regarding the laws of nature you can never have complete certainty about them.
[Speaker D] Exactly, so how really—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I said. I’m saying: we have some trust in the laws of nature, and it’s a very, very strong trust, and therefore a deviation from the statistics in the context of the laws of nature is what we call a miracle. But the truth is that essentially, philosophically, it’s not really different from another rare event.
[Speaker D] Right, that’s why I told the Rabbi: when that rare event has an effect—it saved me, the miracle didn’t just happen as some unusual event, but it also saved me from disaster—then the connection between those two things is what gives us the relation of a miracle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “relation”? It’s just an illusion. So what if it saved me? If it happened naturally, then it happened naturally. What do I care whether it saved me or saved you?
[Speaker D] But again, the probability still seems low.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just psychology. What difference does it make whether it saved me or saved you? If it saved me, I’m impressed; if it saved you, you’re impressed. You understand that if that’s so, then it’s just subjective.
[Speaker D] But this subjectivity is very, very significant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Whether it’s significant or not, that’s an existentialist issue. It’s not a philosophical issue, and it’s not something that interests me.
[Speaker D] When the Rabbi spoke at the beginning of today’s class about the probability that a world would come into being—if the formation of the world had just been a collection of electrons and protons spinning around with no life and nothing at all, then the probability that there would be, say, the constants—those same rare constants—and something was formed, what was formed? A collection of electrons and protons. Would we say anything about that? Fine, something happened.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, of course. That’s completely different. Completely different. It’s like—let’s take the example of a die. I roll a die 100 times, let’s say a fair die, I roll it 100 times. Okay? All 100 times it comes up five. Okay? What’s the probability of that happening? Six to the power of minus 100, right? Meaning one-sixth to the 100th power. Okay?
[Speaker B] In how many times?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One-sixth times one-sixth times one-sixth, 100 times. Right? A negligible number. Okay? Now I get a different result: 1, 6, 6, 4, 5, 6, 3, 1, 2—some other sequence of 100. What’s the probability of that happening? The same probability. Right? So why am I impressed by the first and not impressed by the second?
[Speaker D] Because I’m built in such a way that things that repeat themselves—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not because you’re built that way.
[Speaker B] No, there’s already certainty there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This astonishment is objective. We talked about this in previous classes. Why?
[Speaker D] If I were subjectively built around that rare number that happened to come up, that’s the number I’d have been singing all day—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since my youth I’ve been repeating that song, and suddenly a miracle happened and that’s the number that came up. I explained this in one of the previous classes: the fact that I’m subjectively built such that 100 sixes is special to me, and I suddenly see an outcome that for me is the special outcome—that requires an objective explanation, not a subjective one. Because something special happened—something that is special from my point of view. And true, it’s only special from my point of view, but the fact that it happened is an objectively rare fact. One hundred sixes is a different result from just some other sequence of 100. All the other sequences of 100 are the same for me. And 100 sixes is a special result. Therefore there is an objective problem here. If you got 100 sixes, you would be convinced that the die is not fair. I promise you. And if some other sequence of 100 came up, you wouldn’t say the die is not fair because how did it come out exactly 1, 6, 5, 6, 4—you know, the specific sequence you got. And when you say something about the die, then you are making an objective claim, in effect. You’re saying: there’s something different about the die when 100 sixes come up. And I won’t say that when some other sequence of 100 comes up. So although the specialness of 100 sixes is specialness only in my eyes, the conclusions are objective conclusions, not subjective ones.
[Speaker D] But if I had said that other number in advance, then the Rabbi would agree that this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct.
[Speaker D] So if, for example, I’m waiting for God to save me, for Him to help me succeed on this exam, and I very much expect and hope for it, and by chance what I wanted happens—that’s psychological. No, but again that’s exactly the same thing… Why did exactly what I wanted happen?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Again, if there are a million sick people, and let’s say the chance of being saved is one in a million, and one of them was saved, okay? Now, he desperately wanted to be saved, but all million wanted to be saved, and so did he—everybody wanted to be saved. Is it significant that it happened to him? No. It will happen to somebody, and it will always be someone who expected to be saved. So why can’t you say the same thing about the 100 sixes?
[Speaker D] But the Rabbi could say that if there were people who had chosen that other random sequence and had known in advance they wanted it and dreamed about it, then only because they weren’t created, then the Rabbi—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly! That’s the great wonder—it’s a real wonder—that our subjective judgments acquire objective significance in statistics. The fact that in my eyes 100 sixes is special, that’s only in my eyes. There could be another creature in whose eyes something else would be special. The fact that in my world a die fell 100 times on six, and in my eyes that is special, says something objective about the die. It says the die is probably not fair. We talked about this one of the previous times. Yes, there’s something very tricky here. Tricky. Yes. Okay, good, let’s stop here. I’m not starting the new topic already, because we’re past the time. Not a new topic, not a new series, but the next chapter in this series. Okay, so we’ll stop here. Sabbath peace.
[Speaker B] Thank you very much, Rabbi. Thank you very much. Yes. I want to ask you something. In Tuesday’s class in “A Broad Look at the Torah,” the Rabbi spoke about perfection and perfecting, in Rabbi Kook, and argued that there is an effect on God because if He created, then He wants something from us, and so on. I have some logical flaw here that I wanted to ask about in this whole issue, including both Rabbi Kook and what the Rabbi argued: if by chance God does need and require, so to speak, some kind of perfecting, then why the Jewish people? Logically, He should have spread it over the whole world and to as many people as possible…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the whole world has tasks, and the tasks are divided up. The Jewish people received a task, and the rest of the world also received a task. Even within the Jewish people, the priests received more tasks and ordinary Israelites received fewer tasks.
[Speaker B] Yes, but the perfecting that Rabbi Kook speaks about is unique to the Jewish people, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, why not? No, absolutely not. Yes? No, what are you talking about? The whole world—the elevation of the whole world. I think in that very same place he even speaks about it. About the elevation of the entire world, not only of the Jewish people.
[Speaker B] No, the elevation of the whole world, yes, but the perfecting of the one who awaits and wants perfection as a human being—there he’s speaking about the Jewish people, he’s not talking about all the gentiles.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. It’s a shame to argue about what Rabbi Kook is talking about; I’m not talking about that.
[Speaker B] What are you talking about?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All of humanity. Everyone has roles, and each person has to do his role. It’s a division like between priests and Israelites or something like that. There’s a division of tasks, that’s all.
[Speaker B] So then why, in this case, as it were… Okay, let’s address it that way. So logically I want to understand: then why, as it were, do the gentiles not have revelation and all kinds of things like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They do have revelation. At Mount Sinai there was revelation, and they also received commandments: the seven Noahide commandments.
[Speaker B] But they don’t know about that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t know? What can you do? A screwup.
[Speaker B] Yes, but also—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are also many Jews who don’t know there was a revelation at Sinai, and they’re obligated in all the commandments. So what? What does that prove?
[Speaker B] They should at least have been informed. They were informed. There’s some kind of failure here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They were informed, they were informed. They were informed already from Noah. Adam and Noah already informed them. But you know, the chain of transmission apparently broke there. By the way, only partially. Christianity and Islam did receive the message, and they do understand that this task was imposed on them.
[Speaker B] These missions are full of blood and other clashes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not the missions they added. I’m talking about the seven Noahide commandments.
[Speaker B] They didn’t receive the seven Noahide commandments. Why shouldn’t they receive them? Why not? They have no justice system.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They have no justice system? What do you mean?
[Speaker B] They have no justice system. More than that, all indulgences and the like—that means a person doesn’t need to repent for anything at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t understand.
[Speaker B] Do you know what an indulgence is? No. Erasure of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forgiveness, yes. Okay.
[Speaker B] Well then, what does that mean? That a person needs nothing at all. Even his prayers—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, he does need something. He has to confess afterward, fine. So he confesses and it’s forgiven. What difference does it make? But again, I’m not talking about the additions invented by Christians and Muslims. I’m talking about that message itself: that one should behave according to the seven Noahide commandments, be a human being. That message did pass to them from Mount Sinai. They receive it from Mount Sinai, not from anywhere else. They too believe in it. How to relate to their additions is another question. Even there I’m not sure the attitude should be so negative, but that’s already a different discussion.
[Speaker B] Fine, I’m not talking about whether it’s negative or not negative. All views, as it were, have their place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, right now I’m talking only about that core: to be a mensch, to be a human being.
[Speaker B] Okay, that requires thought. Okay. Will there be a series on this? On what? On this issue. Which one? Beyond what the Rabbi wrote on the website. About the Noahides? Yes. The perfection, the perfection of the world, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, no, I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.
[Speaker B] Maybe it’s because—I’ll tell you. For all those who follow Maimonides and do not accept the ideas of Kabbalah and the like, to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is affected by a person’s actions is very difficult. Because the great God who created the world—what are you already affecting in Him with all this? But maybe somewhere in thought perhaps there is room for it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t see why one can’t accept the thesis of perfection and perfecting without being a kabbalist. Ah, because—
[Speaker B] I don’t know, maybe because Maimonides speaks about it differently.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave Maimonides aside. I’m asking you: why not accept it?
[Speaker B] I’ll tell you why. Because if God—when it was necessary for Him to create a human being, He was not—at some stage, we see it from the Torah, at some point the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to create the human being. The human being was given some kind of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why did He decide? Because He wanted to; He needed him.
[Speaker B] “Needed” — I’m not so sure about that. Meaning, I don’t see—it’s an assumption—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I’m asking: what’s the problem with that assumption?
[Speaker H] No, if you get to saying “service for a higher need,” that really is going very far.
[Speaker B] No, no, I don’t think at all that “service for a higher need” is such an assumption with no basis whatsoever. Meaning, the one who coined it in Hazal wasn’t—there is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a verse: “Give strength to God.”
[Speaker B] “Give strength to God”—Shapiro and Franco used that, and we know where he used it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say he used it, but there is such a verse. What do you do with such a verse?
[Speaker B] Yes, but “strength to God,” a person can also give that, yes, that we… But how? How?
[Speaker I] There are also verses like “the hand of God” and “the eyes of God”…
[Speaker B] No, no, that’s something else. “Give strength to God” is, as it were, to give Him something from a human being.
[Speaker I] No, no, something else—you are now interpreting it differently from the literal meaning. It’s not simple; it’s not something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can take it out of its plain meaning, no problem. We take many things out of their plain meaning. But what’s the problem with saying it? You don’t have to be a kabbalist to say it, and it sounds reasonable.
[Speaker B] So what’s the problem? No, I’m saying the exact opposite. The exact opposite—I’m actually expanding the view. Yes, no, in principle I want to move away from the simple understanding, and I want to understand it differently, and then “give strength to God,” for me, speaks about something else. That the Jewish people are indeed doing something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, you see, you see—that’s forcing a difficulty. Do you understand? What do you mean, you have a question and you have no answer to it, I offer you an answer, and then you tell me yes, but the answer isn’t necessary. Fine, it isn’t necessary, but it answers the question. Is it better to reject the answer and remain with the question? Again, I’m explaining—I’m asking a different question—
[Speaker B] Another question about this answer. Yes—what kind of strength can I give to the One who created the world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To give Him the perfecting.
[Speaker B] Okay, I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He cannot be perfected—and the strength is exactly that. It’s the perfection and the perfecting. Rabbi Kook there brings, when he talks about perfection and perfecting, he says: “and this is the secret of service for a higher need.” That’s how he explains “service for a higher need.”
[Speaker B] Yes, I saw that. After all, on Tuesday when I heard the class, I went and read the article again, everything he wrote and so on, because it’s a bit—how shall I put it? Fine, in any case it requires a great deal of thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Have a peaceful Sabbath, goodbye.