#47 Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham – Evolution and Rational Faith, and on Critical Thinking – Evolution Is Not a Dirty Word
This transcript was generated 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
- Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham and the book God Plays Dice
- The motivation for writing and the responses to the book
- Education, “automatic disqualification,” and the danger of fleeing from thought
- Evolution as tautology and the claim that it is unfalsifiable
- Evolution and God: independence and strengthening the physico-theological proof
- Atheism, Dawkins, and soul versus evolution
- Rationality, the hostage deal, and the takeover of emotions
- Bubbles, postmodernism, demonization, and lack of listening
- Developing critical thinking and listening exercises
- Reserve duty as a softening encounter and the end of the conversation
Summary
General Overview
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, who holds a doctorate in physics and is a senior lecturer at the Advanced Institute for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University, presents his book God Plays Dice as a response to Richard Dawkins’s book Is There a God?, and describes his goal as disconnecting evolution from faith so that it can be approached matter-of-factly, without panic over theological implications. He argues that the core of evolution is tautological and therefore unfalsifiable, but precisely for that reason has a high degree of certainty, and he explains that evolution does not negate the soul because it deals with biology, not the spiritual dimension. He describes how the notion of “either evolution or God” is shared both by neo-Darwinist atheists and by creationists, and develops an argument that evolution actually strengthens the physico-theological proof by shifting the focus of wonder to the laws of nature themselves. Later, he argues that Israeli society suffers from emotionalism and postmodernism that weaken logical thinking and genuine listening, and he proposes systematic training in critical thinking in order to improve public discourse on issues such as the hostage deal and judicial reform.
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham and the book God Plays Dice
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham holds a doctorate in physics and is a senior lecturer at the Advanced Institute for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University, and he has written dozens of books in philosophy, logic, and Jewish thought. The episode focuses on the book God Plays Dice, which deals with the philosophical implications of evolutionary theory and the question of what evolution really tells us. The book was written as a response to Richard Dawkins’s book Is There a God?, which uses evolution to argue that there is no God, and the interviewer presents the aim of the podcast as bringing evolution to people who have not encountered it properly and showing that it can coexist with faith, much like the book does.
The motivation for writing and the responses to the book
Rabbi Abraham says that he read Dawkins’s book and wrote an “angry talkback” that became his own book, even though he himself does not see the subject as acute from a theological-philosophical standpoint, since it was clear to him that evolution does not say much in terms of faith or anti-faith. Rabbi Abraham explains that he wrote the book because he saw that Dawkins’s presentation was troubling people and even discouraging them from engaging with evolution at the scientific level, and he wanted to put things in proper proportion and allow a substantive approach by disconnecting faith from evolution. Rabbi Abraham says he received relatively few responses and concludes that the issue troubles Christians more than Jews, and in Israel it is “fairly sleepy” and is sometimes rejected angrily out of lack of thought rather than from a structured worldview.
Rabbi Abraham says that in the religious world the book prompted people to ask questions and take an interest, while in the secular world there were few responses, although over time he realized that more people had read it than he had thought, and he also remembers angry reviews from polemicists. Rabbi Abraham mentions an interesting phone response from Professor Yosef Neumann of Tel Aviv University, who passed away shortly after their conversation, and connects that conversation to issues he was then working on in writing The Science of Freedom, about neuroscience and free choice.
Education, “automatic disqualification,” and the danger of fleeing from thought
The interviewer and Rabbi Abraham criticize the fact that evolution is not taught in the education system, and Rabbi Abraham says that avoiding the topic out of a sense that it is invalid creates a problematic sleepiness. Rabbi Abraham argues that people are exposed to evolution later on without guidance or intellectual tools, and then it can “knock them flat” and lead them to abandon religious commitment, even though in his view the questions do not require that. Rabbi Abraham connects this to a pattern from the Enlightenment era, the dilemma of “whether to be righteous and stupid or wicked and wise,” and argues that entrenchment and the failure to accompany young people through their struggles contributed to secularization and to “eighty percent of the people” drifting away from commitment to Torah and commandments.
Rabbi Abraham says that when the intelligent ones leave and only “the mediocre” remain, insecurity, fear, and defensiveness are created, which make healthy religious education difficult, and he declares that he does not want a religious world in which people stay only because they are not “brave or smart.” Rabbi Abraham presents the need to confront issues rather than bury one’s head in the sand, because even on a tactical level people will encounter the issue, and the community may lose precisely those most prepared to deal with it.
Evolution as tautology and the claim that it is unfalsifiable
Rabbi Abraham explains that the example of “the finch’s beak” in the Galápagos Islands is not really “speciation” but merely changes in the beak, and he distinguishes between the heavy question of speciation and the general principle. Rabbi Abraham formulates the core of evolution as “the survival of the survivors” and argues that this component is tautological: whoever survived is whoever managed to survive, so there is no possibility of falsification here. Rabbi Abraham attributes to Popper the statement that there are tautologies that are “illuminating,” and argues that evolution is brilliant even though it is unfalsifiable at the core of survival, comparing this to the certainty of “two plus three equals five.”
Rabbi Abraham distinguishes between the tautological core, which is unfalsifiable, and other components such as genetics, which can be falsified, and he says that the core alone does not sustain the theory of evolution. Rabbi Abraham gives the example of an “evolution of houses” on the seashore, where a flood leaves behind the sturdier houses, but there is no evolution without “genetics,” because houses have no hereditary mechanism that will cause the next generation to resemble the “survivors” unless human beings learn and build accordingly. Rabbi Abraham says that the criticisms he received about the claim of unfalsifiability are directed at elements that do not belong to the core, and he presents unfalsifiability not as a criticism but as praise.
Evolution and God: independence and strengthening the physico-theological proof
Rabbi Abraham describes a common zero-sum view of “either evolution or God,” which characterizes both “atheist neo-Darwinists” and “believing creationists,” and he says that the book comes out against this view and argues that one can accept both evolution and God because these are independent decisions. Rabbi Abraham argues that evolution meets faith at only one point: what Kant called “the physico-theological proof,” which is based on the complexity of the world and the claim that a complex thing requires a composer or designer. Rabbi Abraham describes the atheist argument that evolution provides a model in which complexity arises through a “blind” process and therefore overturns the assumption that a complex thing cannot come into being without a guiding hand.
Rabbi Abraham says that even if evolution overturns one proof, that does not imply there is no God, because there are other ways of arguing for God’s existence, and he compares this to finding “a bug in the proof” that the sum of the angles in a triangle equals 180 degrees, which does not refute the claim itself but only the proof. Rabbi Abraham adds a stronger claim, namely that evolution actually strengthens the physico-theological proof by shifting the question to the “laws” themselves: evolution is a collection of laws of nature, and if it can be derived from fundamental physical forces, then the question becomes who is responsible for the laws of physics being as they are. Rabbi Abraham draws a distinction between “the argument within the laws” and “the argument from the laws,” and stresses that evolution explains within the framework of the laws but does not explain the laws themselves, connecting this to fine-tuning.
Rabbi Abraham illustrates this with an analogy of a coordinated factory in which instructions written on the wall do not explain who composed them, and argues that “laws need a lawgiver.” Rabbi Abraham argues that a set of four physical laws that leads from a Big Bang “fourteen and a half billion years ago” to a Zoom conversation in the present, without a guiding hand, is evidence of the immense intellectual power of whoever created those laws, because any small change in the constants would have “blown the whole story apart.” Rabbi Abraham addresses the claim of “chance” through the analogy of a die coming up “a thousand sixes in a row,” and argues that the random possibility is theoretically possible but not plausible, criticizing the use of ad hoc assumptions such as multiple unobserved attempts. Rabbi Abraham describes materialists or Darwinists in this context as “the great masters of ad hoc thinking,” and concludes with a framework of comparing hypotheses in which one chooses the more plausible one without claiming necessity.
Atheism, Dawkins, and soul versus evolution
Rabbi Abraham describes how Dawkins presents “a ladder of seven levels” and places himself at “six” as a de facto atheist who does not claim certainty that there is no God, but rather that he has no reason to assume there is one, and he quotes Bertrand Russell’s “celestial teapot” to distinguish between lack of knowledge and plausibility. The interviewer raises the claim that Yuval Noah Harari says emphatically that there is no soul because it did not evolve evolutionarily, and Rabbi Abraham argues that evolution cannot prove that there is no soul because it assumes there is no soul if one assumes that we are “only a body.” Rabbi Abraham says he does not know at what stage in evolution “the soul entered,” and he argues that this does not damage the argument because he is not claiming that evolution explains the soul, but rather that the soul is a spiritual matter and evolution deals with biology and with the connection between body and soul, which he attributes to “the Holy One, blessed be He” in some way.
Rabbi Abraham distinguishes between soul and vitalism and argues that a dualist can accept that biological matter is the same matter as physics and still think that there is “something more” beyond biology. Rabbi Abraham says that the categorical dismissal of vitalism in biology seems to him hasty, and he argues that we still do not have a full picture of the transition from physics to biology to psychology and sociology. Rabbi Abraham says that the assumption of non-vitalism is a fruitful methodological assumption that advances research, but warns against turning it into a claim about reality, and gives another analogy: the scientific assumption that God is not involved in nature is useful for looking for laws, but turning it into a factual conclusion is “a logical leap.” Rabbi Abraham says that scientists have “a very itchy trigger finger” when it comes to logical leaps in philosophy, even though they would not do that in scientific research.
Rationality, the hostage deal, and the takeover of emotions
Rabbi Abraham argues that secular people, and especially “the left wing,” are more emotional, contrary to the street-level impression that religiosity is more experiential and emotional, and he points to a correlation between secularity and the left. Rabbi Abraham uses the hostage deal as an example and argues that someone emotional will support the deal, while emphasizing that there are also good arguments in its favor and that the picture is not one-sided, and he himself generally opposes such deals. Rabbi Abraham defines emotionalism not as the mere existence of emotion but as making emotion decisive in the decision, and describes an example from a reality show in which “the head says” one thing and “the heart” decides, without even needing to say what the decision is.
Rabbi Abraham argues that the fallacy of following emotions has always existed, but the novelty today is that it has become an ideology out of “despair of reason” in postmodernism, and he describes contempt for “cold thinking” and the presentation of rational people as “evil” and “detached from morality.” Rabbi Abraham says, “morality is in the head, not in the heart,” and describes an answer he gave a student about a matchmaking question, according to which “only the intellect” decides, while the heart is important input that the intellect must take into account.
Bubbles, postmodernism, demonization, and lack of listening
The interviewer describes life inside bubbles and narratives that do not communicate, and Rabbi Abraham develops a description of an echo chamber in which each side feeds only on information that confirms it, declares facts to be “fake,” and is convinced that the whole truth is on its side. Rabbi Abraham argues that this leads to demonization, in which the other side is “either evil or stupid,” and therefore there is no reason to listen to it, creating a feedback loop that reinforces entrenchment. Rabbi Abraham says that what troubles him is not that people disagree with him but that they do not listen to his arguments, and he distinguishes between “hearing” and “listening,” the latter requiring truly weighing the other side’s arguments.
Rabbi Abraham criticizes attempts at dialogue that focus on politeness and on “the Rabin tent of tolerance and brotherhood of nations” instead of genuinely weighing arguments, and he says that this politeness is “more destructive” than insults because it hides a lack of listening. Rabbi Abraham says he would rather be cursed after the other side has weighed his arguments, and presents postmodernism as causing despair of arguments and therefore settling for politeness instead of persuasion.
Developing critical thinking and listening exercises
Rabbi Abraham recounts that he taught a course on critical thinking in the Haredi branch in Kiryat Ono and proposes an exercise in which a person is required to defend a position he despises and build good arguments for it, so as to discover that it is not “nonsense” and to stop seeing the person who holds it as evil or stupid. Rabbi Abraham says that treating the root of the problem by understanding that there are arguments on both sides will purify the discourse on its own, whereas trying to purify discourse without thought does not solve the problem. Rabbi Abraham gives an example from the arguments over judicial reform, where supporters and opponents effectively say, “true, a reform is needed, but they went too far,” and he argues that the gaps are fueled by a perception of a “completely full glass” versus a “completely empty glass,” turning into a personal argument about figures like Rothman and Yariv Levin instead of about content.
Rabbi Abraham argues that in a discussion one can discuss arguments rather than personalities, and proposes first agreeing on the substance and only afterward discussing the people carrying it out. Rabbi Abraham says that directed exercises in listening are needed, and that one should present the extreme views of others “in the best possible way,” and he recounts giving Haredi students articles by “leftists, antisemites” to read and defend fiercely in order to understand the angle. Rabbi Abraham proposes building critical-thinking seminars around non-current topics in order to train these abilities, and argues that “no reconciliation tents in Rabin Square” will solve the problem, because what is needed is to rebuild the willingness to think from the ground up, starting in school and university, and he describes university lecturers as, in his view, the population that is “the least thoughtful” and “the most emotional.”
Reserve duty as a softening encounter and the end of the conversation
The interviewer presents the experience of reserve duty as a place where people from extremes live together and are forced to understand one another, and Rabbi Abraham agrees that this may soften things but expresses doubt about the ability to project that onto society at large. The interviewer mentions the idea of not setting up a party for reservists so that they can instead balance existing parties, and the conversation ends with thanks to Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham for his time and for his books.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham holds a doctorate in physics and is a senior lecturer at the Advanced Institute for Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He has written dozens of books dealing with philosophy, logic, and Jewish thought. In this episode we mainly talked about the book God Plays Dice, which deals with the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution and what evolution really tells us. The book was written as a response to Richard Dawkins’s book Is There a God?, which uses evolution to try to argue that there is no God. And we also talked about what caused him to write the book, the responses he received to it, about evolution as a science that cannot be falsified, which was a part of the book that surprised me a bit. We talked about whether evolution and natural selection prove that we have no soul. Beyond that, we also talked about the need to move toward rational thinking, for example on current issues like the hostage deal that was and may continue to be, and also about the lack of critical thinking in Israeli society, which basically prevents us from conducting a healthy discussion. So it was a really interesting conversation. I learned a lot, and I learn a lot from the books of Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation too. And if you haven’t read it yet, go read the book God Plays Dice. And just before we begin, the goal of this podcast is to bring evolution to people who haven’t really encountered it properly and to show that it can also fit with faith, similar to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s book. And therefore, so that we can keep going and grow and reach more people for whom this is relevant, I’d appreciate it if you rate the podcast, follow it, share it with more people, and also comment—let me know what you think about the episode, this episode, other episodes. Thank you very much, and enjoy listening. What made you write the book God Plays Dice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is, I read Dawkins’s book Is There a God?, with a question mark. And as my son, who literally just left the Zoom, defined it—I wrote an angry talkback. That angry talkback was my book. That’s ultimately what caused it, because honestly, the topic doesn’t interest me all that much. Meaning, I don’t feel that it’s such an acute issue for me. It may be scientifically interesting—when it comes to taste, everyone has their own fields of interest. But in terms of its theological-philosophical significance, it didn’t sound to me like such an interesting topic, because it was pretty clear to me that basically it doesn’t say much in terms of faith or anti-faith. But since I saw that Dawkins’s book and what it represents troubles quite a few people and even deters them from engaging with evolution simply at the scientific level, I felt that it was nevertheless important to get into it in order to place things in the right perspective, the right proportion, and allow people to relate to the subject in a substantive way. Meaning, whoever is interested can be interested, whoever isn’t interested won’t be interested. But you don’t need to be troubled by the theological, faith-related implications of this topic, and that was basically my goal. In other words, my goal was to disconnect the two things—faith and evolution—in order to allow people to approach them substantively. That was basically the framework of my approach.
[Speaker A] And what kind of reactions did you get right away, or do you continue to get?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is, I didn’t get that many reactions, and I think that somewhat confirmed for me a feeling I already had beforehand—that issues of evolution and faith trouble Christians much more than Jews. Jews just aren’t all that troubled by these things. In America, after all, it’s a very hot issue—they invest resources and time and people in it immeasurably more than here. Everything there is bigger, of course, but still, it seems that here this is a pretty sleepy topic. Every now and then people may lash out against it very angrily or reject it, and that too—but not because they invested too much thought in it; on the contrary, because maybe they didn’t invest too much thought in it. And in a certain sense I felt like I was waking elephants from their resting place, when they had been lying there quietly and the whole story wasn’t bothering them. But on the other hand, it wasn’t bothering them because it was simply invalid and that was that. Meaning, you don’t have to deal with it because it’s invalid, period—not because they had some structured doctrine. And in that sense, the fact that I was waking those elephants from their resting place didn’t trouble me, because I do think it is proper to wake them and tell people: no, it isn’t invalid. In other words, you can engage with this matter. And therefore the reactions I got in the religious world were actually from various people who were awakened to this issue because of my book and started asking questions and becoming interested and so on. In the world outside the religious world I got very few reactions. Slowly, over time, it became clear to me that more people than I had thought had read the book, but there weren’t any very significant reactions that I remember. Some of the polemicists, of course, including secular ones, wrote angry reviews and so on, as expected.
[Speaker A] Did anyone from Dawkins’s school respond to the book in a substantive way?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Hebrew, yes—we’re not talking about English. In Hebrew, yes. Yes, in Hebrew. Yes, there were such people. You’re already asking me hard questions, because I don’t even remember their names or who exactly.
[Speaker A] Got it. Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There were, but there were a few of those—you know, the people who run angry atheist blogs of various kinds—who did write, even fairly structured responses and so on, although in my view the arguments didn’t really hold water. But yes, there were such responses. There was an interesting response I mentioned not long ago from a Jew named Yosef Neumann, Professor Yosef Neumann from Tel Aviv University, who passed away a little while after our conversation. He called me shortly after the book came out, and we had a very interesting conversation—an interesting and smart man. I had also criticized him a bit in the book, so we talked on the phone, and it touched on subjects I was dealing with at that very time while writing The Science of Freedom, which deals with neuroscience and free choice. But that too was an interesting response, by phone, not in writing. We spoke—we had a very long conversation—and not long after that I heard that he had passed away, sadly. Wow. I see. And that was it. I didn’t feel that any very intensive discussion followed the book. I see.
[Speaker A] I think everything
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you mentioned just now, Rabbi—the topic is sleepy. Yes. And in the Jewish world the topic is very sleepy. The problem, as I assume you’re well aware and as you defined your goals, is that part of the issue is that it’s sleepy and automatically invalid. Meaning, not sleepy in the sense that you can therefore also deal with it—no. It’s sleepy and people don’t deal with it because it’s invalid. And in that sense, that sleepiness is a problematic sleepiness, because no—it isn’t invalid in my view, and therefore it is worth thinking about it and not leaving it sleepy, precisely in order to show that it isn’t problematic and that it can be discussed.
[Speaker A] Yes, like you say—there’s a note in the book that they don’t teach this in the education system, and that’s wrong both because it’s not honest—because if evolution contradicts faith, then let’s talk about it—and also because it simply isn’t true, because it simply does not contradict faith, as you show in the book.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And a third thing—I’ll add a third aspect—that when people are eventually exposed to this issue, it can knock them flat, because suddenly they’re exposed to something they didn’t encounter while they were still in formative stages, when there was someone who could accompany them, think with them, and then—and I meet such people—meaning, people who at some point encounter this issue and it knocks them on their face and they leave everything, meaning they leave their religious commitment, when in my view the questions don’t require that at all. And only because they weren’t immunized against it or weren’t given the tools of thought—that’s what made them fall. By the way, this is a symptom that I think appeared for the first time—or I don’t know if for the first time, but in a very prominent way—in the Enlightenment period. An example I often bring is that the young Jew of that period was presented with the impossible dilemma: whether to be righteous and stupid or wicked and wise.
[Speaker A] Meaning,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in order to be righteous you had to be stupid, and if you wanted to be wise the price was that you were wicked, since you weren’t allowed to deal with these things. And then a great many people, not surprisingly, chose to be wicked and wise rather than righteous and stupid. And therefore—and that’s how, I don’t know if that’s how, but also that way—the secularization we meet today was created, with eighty percent of the people not committed to Torah and commandments. And this is the result of that same entrenchment in the Enlightenment period, when there were no people willing to accompany those young people in their struggles and give them some kind of response, out of fear that you wouldn’t have a response. But because of that fear, in the end you didn’t give them any response—not even the response you could have given—and everyone fell like flies. And I think we’re going back to that today. We’re returning today to that same outlook. Meaning, you present people with that same crossroads: whether to be righteous and stupid or wicked and wise, and a great many people choose to be wicked and wise—in quotation marks, yes, wicked and wise—because you’re not willing to go into the issues with them and discuss them. And therefore I think that even the third layer I added for you—even on the tactical level—you need to enter this topic, because the young people will encounter it; at some stage many of them will encounter it, and you’ll lose specifically the intelligent ones, and that is what happens, sadly. Meaning, the intelligent people who are willing to enter the subject and deal with it—you lose them. And the ones who remain with you are those who are fine, the subject doesn’t interest them, or they’re afraid of it, or things like that. And then what happens is: you’re left with the mediocre. The intelligent leave, and the mediocre who remain themselves understand that they remained because they’re mediocre. And that creates in them a certain lack of self-confidence, a kind of fear, a kind of defensiveness, and you can’t really educate people on that basis—on a basis of insecurity, on a basis of burying your head in the sand and saying, “There are issues I’m not willing to deal with because I know that if I deal with them there won’t be answers and nobody has answers.” And even if someone ultimately remains within the religious world because he isn’t brave enough or smart enough—I don’t want such a religious world. Meaning, I don’t want people who remain with that kind of insecurity because it’s their comfort zone, while all the brave and smart people are outside. What kind of religious consciousness does that create?
[Speaker A] Yes, completely. One of the things that surprised me in the book, by the way, is that evolution is actually not surprising—there’s something in it, you talk about this in the passage where you mention the research in the Galápagos Islands on the finch’s beak, the finches—you say there’s nothing really new in the research, which evolutionary researchers get very excited about and turn into some very famous and successful study to show speciation, to show differentiation into species. And you talk about it as a practical tautology. Can you expand on that a bit?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Well, first of all, the finches’ beaks are not really speciation; these are simply changes that the finch’s beak underwent. We didn’t move on to other species. The question of how species differentiate is a major question, but that’s another matter. On the principled level, though, the point is this: the core of evolution is basically—you could call it—the survival of the survivors, yes? Those with high survivability are the ones who will survive. Now I formulate it this way—it maybe makes the matter sound a bit ridiculous—but it’s entirely true, and this component of evolution is tautological. Because in the end, the one who survived is the one who managed to survive. There’s no great content here. Except that, as a very well-known philosopher once said—Popper, I think—there are tautologies that are illuminating. Meaning, the fact that something is tautological doesn’t mean it’s trivial or uninteresting. Sometimes there are tautologies that are very surprising, even though after someone discovers them—Darwin in this case—you suddenly slap your forehead and say, wait, how did nobody think of this before? Because once he said it, it couldn’t be otherwise. Meaning, it’s not something you can really falsify, because every time you try to falsify it you’d have to show that someone non-survivable survived. That can’t happen. So how did he survive? Meaning, if he survived, then evidently he was survivable. Now you just have to look for in what sense he was survivable. We don’t always understand that; that is, we don’t always understand which traits helped him survive, but it’s clear that if he survived then he was survivable. In that sense it’s completely tautological. So a lot of people get somewhat offended when I say this—people from the neo-Darwinist side get offended because it seems to them like some kind of denial of the issue or belittling of it. And I’m very far from belittling it. I think evolutionary theory is a brilliant theory. It’s a brilliant theory, but it’s true that it isn’t falsifiable. And every time you raise a refuting argument, you suddenly discover their excuses—not excuses in a negative sense, but the explanations they produce for you that suddenly show you, “See, you won’t manage to falsify this.” Because it can’t be falsified. It really can’t be falsified—just as you can’t falsify the claim that two plus three equals five. Therefore, this theory really is not falsifiable. But that’s not to its discredit—it’s to its credit. In that sense it has almost mathematical certainty. And just as there is certainty in two plus three equals five, and I won’t be able to refute it, it’s clear to me that they won’t be able to refute evolution. Of course, when I speak about evolution, it has several components, and that’s why I said I’m speaking about the tautological component within it. Genetics can be falsified. Genetics is a very important component in evolution; without genetics there is no evolution. But I’m saying, the kernel, yes? This core of the survival of the survivors—that cannot be falsified. And it is a theory that is tautological. That’s why people get terribly offended and go to great lengths to show—because I was criticized for this—all kinds of people show me with signs and wonders that it is falsifiable. It’s all nonsense. It isn’t falsifiable. What is falsifiable are those elements that don’t belong to this core. And obviously this core by itself does not sustain the theory of evolution—that’s clear. Think about the evolution of houses. I think I brought that example there in the book. There are houses on the seashore, and they’re built—various houses, of wood, of stone, one strength or another, one height or another, one width and so on. There is lots of variation, yes? Different mutations of houses. Now a flood comes and knocks down many of the houses, and what remains are the more durable houses. Okay, so they remain. Why isn’t that an evolutionary process? Because houses don’t have genetics. Meaning, the next houses won’t be in the image of the houses that survived before. Unless people draw conclusions and build the houses according to principles they learned from the survivability of the existing houses. And then that de facto also introduces genetics into the matter. But without genetics, the survival of the survivors by itself doesn’t create evolution. It’s only one component. A very important component—it’s the core of the matter—but it isn’t falsifiable, yet that alone is not evolution. So one has to be careful here. On the one hand, the component, the kernel of the theory, isn’t falsifiable. On the other hand, obviously that’s only its kernel. Without additional components, you don’t really have evolution. And in that sense, something that isn’t falsifiable is often an accusation, but in my view that’s not an accusation; on the contrary. It isn’t falsifiable because it’s as certain as mathematics.
[Speaker A] So for me that really, really was eye-opening. And maybe one more little taste from the book before we move on, because I really, really recommend that anyone who hasn’t read the book go read it. How do we see from evolution that Dawkins’s claims are not correct? And in fact, if anything, evolution proves that there is a God, and not the opposite, as Dawkins tries to say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so here there really should perhaps be some introduction first. The feeling when you enter this field is that it’s a zero-sum game. Meaning, you need to decide: either evolution or God. And not only that, but this outlook is shared by both the neo-Darwinist atheists and the believing creationists. Both sides of the barricade share the same conception, that you need to choose: either God or evolution. The difference between them is whom you choose—whether you choose God or choose evolution. And the book is meant to come out against this conception shared by both sides. You don’t have to choose. You can accept both evolution and God. So first of all, that’s a passive statement. Meaning, you can accept evolution, you can accept God—there’s no contradiction between them, they’re independent. So you can be a believer or an atheist, and you can accept evolution or not on scientific grounds; there’s no connection between the two things. These are two independent decisions. Except that in the course of the discussion I tried to show more than that—one step further. And my claim is that not only is evolution indifferent to faith, or faith indifferent to evolution, but I think evolution actually strengthens the evidence in favor of the existence of God. Not only does it not refute it or contradict it; it actually strengthens it. Why? And here we need to enter a little into the proof, and I’ll do it completely schematically because there are lots of details. But the claim is this. Where does evolution meet faith, or seemingly clash with faith? At only one specific point and no other. Only one point. That point is what Kant called the physico-theological proof. The physico-theological proof is basically one of several kinds of proof, or one kind among several kinds of proofs, for the existence of God, based on the complexity of the world, of life, and the claim is that a complex thing needs a designer—it does not come into being on its own. This is a very common argument in favor of the existence of God. Kant called it the… the physico-theological proof. Evolution basically offers an illustration or a model that shows you that this isn’t true: a complex and sophisticated thing can come into existence without a guiding hand, through a blind process, okay? Even that sounds a bit neo-Darwinist—it’s not blind, all nonsense. A blind process can produce sophisticated and complex beings. And if so, then the assumption at the basis of the physico-theological proof has fallen. Because the assumption there says that a complex thing cannot come into being on its own without a guiding hand. And here you see that it can. The physico-theological proof has fallen. So my claim about this is, first of all, let’s say it has fallen. Does that mean there is no God? No. It means that this proof for the existence of God has been overturned, refuted. But there are other lines of argument or other proofs in favor of the existence of God, so what does this have to do with it? You can accept evolution—you’re right, Kant’s physico-theological proof has fallen—but I have another 119 other proofs that have nothing to do with this issue at all, and they can remain intact. I don’t know—someone who believes in the revelation at Mount Sinai—can’t he accept the existence of God because he believes in evolution? Why? So he thinks there is a God because he encountered Him at Mount Sinai, or because his father encountered Him at Mount Sinai, and together with that he thinks evolution is correct. True, he doesn’t have proof for God from the fact that a complex thing can’t arise on its own. Fine, so he has another proof because he encountered God. What does that have to do with it? Therefore, the fact that you have overthrown one of the proofs for the existence of God does not mean there is no God. It’s like if you bring me a proof that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, and I find a bug in the proof. Does that mean the sum of the angles in a triangle is not 180? No. It means that the proof you proposed has fallen. The claim itself has to be examined on its own merits, whether it is true or not true. But the fact that you overthrew a proof says nothing about the conclusion of that proof. Therefore, the very notion that you need to choose between there being a God or evolution is ridiculous on the logical level. Now I’m saying more than that: I want to claim that it doesn’t even overthrow the physico-theological proof. Earlier I said fine, so it overthrew the physico-theological proof, I have another 119 proofs. I’m saying, leave it—even that one it didn’t overthrow. And this is a central proof; that is, it isn’t just one among 119, one has to be fair. Yes, it is a very significant proof for many people. And therefore it carries significant weight. Okay, so here I want to make the following claim: what evolution basically says is that something can arise without the involvement of a guiding hand. And here I think it lowers the slope of the mount improbable—that’s Richard Dawkins’s term—
[Speaker A] Richard Dawkins, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now my claim is that evolution itself is a collection of laws of nature. If you’re a reductionist, say just for the sake of discussion, then basically the four fundamental laws of physics, or the fundamental forces of physics, are what underlie the whole thing. And from there on it’s just more and more complex systems—so chemistry and biology, and if you want, anthropology at the end, or psychology. But in the final analysis, you have the fundamental physical forces. That’s all, okay? Now if you tell me that evolution can be derived from the fundamental laws of physics, then of course I’ll ask who is responsible for the fact that the fundamental laws of physics are these laws and not others. I call this the argument within the laws and the argument from the laws, or the argument from outside the laws. Meaning, evolution gives us an explanation within the laws. Given that these are the laws, I can show you that this whole business came about on its own without any guiding hand. Yes, very nice. But that’s only because these are the laws. If the laws were different—that’s fine-tuning, right? If the laws were different, none of this would happen. So if that’s the case, the question comes back: who is responsible for the fact that these are the laws? And that’s the physico-theological proof. And evolution has no explanation for that. In other words, evolution doesn’t explain the laws; evolution assumes the laws and says that within those laws, this is what happens. Yes, what is this comparable to? Suppose I go into some factory and I see that it’s built in an amazing way: everyone knows his role, every department is coordinated with the others, goods and production and marketing and advertising and accountants, and everyone is coordinated amazingly. The whole thing runs like clockwork. Now I say to myself: there must be some genius manager here giving instructions and organizing this whole story. The atheist who’s walking through the factory with me says: what are you talking about? Look here on the wall—there’s a series of instructions written down for all the departments, telling every department and every person exactly what he has to do in every situation. You don’t need… Who, who, who created those laws? The fact that there are laws—the laws are not the cause of anything. Laws need a lawgiver. Now once you tell me there are laws that are what drive this whole process, then you’re basically telling me this: somebody created here a system of four laws of physics, four fundamental forces in physics, that start from the explosion of the Big Bang fourteen and a half billion years ago, and without the involvement of a guiding hand they arrive at a Zoom conversation between you and me now after fourteen and a half billion years, and all the people and animals and all the crazy world we know around us. Yes. Now you want to tell me that these four laws did not come into being so that in the end all life and the whole fabric we know now would come into being? What, it just happened by itself? Fourteen and a half billion years in advance, with no guiding hand? So I say: if there is no guiding hand, that’s proof a thousand times stronger that there is someone here with unimaginable intellectual power, who managed to create four laws—you, if you were given a task like that, there is no chance whatsoever that you’d succeed in doing it—managed to create a set of four laws that, without a guiding hand, manage to produce, through a very long process so complex that we’re trying to understand it even by reverse engineering and can’t, so to produce it forward—that’s insane genius. With four laws of physics such that any tiny change in the values of the constants or in the form of the laws would dismantle the whole story, it would create nothing; nothing at all would have been formed here. So I say: if evolution shows me that this whole story was created without a guiding hand, then that means that whoever created the laws in the first place is a genius a thousand times greater than I thought. And therefore I think that evolution strengthens the physico-theological proof and certainly does not refute it. The only thing is that it strengthens the formulation outside the laws and not the formulation within the laws. It gives an explanation within the laws, and that greatly strengthens the wonder in the face of the laws themselves. How were these laws created, or who is responsible for the coming into being of these laws? Therefore my claim is that not only is this independent, it even strengthens the argument—the findings or the neo-Darwinian theory.
[Speaker A] The atheist will come along against this argument and say: it happened by chance. Meaning, these four laws took shape by chance or something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So first of all, look, anything can be. There is no certainty about anything. Of course not in scientific theories either—there’s no certainty there. But probability—we’re talking about probability. Now what are the chances that something so special and exceptional came about by chance? It could be, but the chance is very small. You roll a die, okay? A thousand times in a row it comes up six. You have two options: either assume the die is loaded, or assume the die is fair but it happened by chance. Now it can happen—every sequence of a thousand results has the same tiny probability of occurring, right? Yes. I don’t know a single sane person in the world who would choose the option that the die is fair and this happened by chance. Right, right. Even though it’s possible on the theoretical level. Not only is it possible, it’s a result with exactly the same probability as any other sequence of a thousand outcomes, right? And still no sane person would choose that possibility. That’s exactly what I’m saying here. Now you can invoke the anthropic principle, and that’s already the continuation of this whole story: fine, but maybe there were many, many attempts, like many, many rolls, and one sequence of a thousand came out as a thousand sixes. That could be. But show me those attempts. You’re assuming that there were many, many, many attempts—none of them have we seen, nothing. So it’s the same as saying somebody rolls a die before your eyes a thousand times and it comes up six. Now you say: look, not that this happened by chance, but there were infinitely many trials of such thousand-roll sequences, and one sequence comes out as a thousand sixes. That could be. But I didn’t see all those rolls. I saw only one set that you did in front of me, one sequence of a thousand that you did before my eyes, and everything came up six. So this hypothesis that there were lots and lots of other rolls, each one yielding a different sequence of a thousand outcomes—how did I happen to land on exactly this one? And I didn’t see all the others. Obviously that’s ad hoc. People often accuse believers of recruiting ad hoc excuses to defend their faith. Nothing could be further from reality. The materialists or the Darwinists are the masters of ad hoc thinking. Everything is ad hoc in order to protect the thesis that there is no external involvement, that this whole business happens by itself. Therefore I say, everything is possible, of course. But when you ask yourself what is more probable between two possibilities—yes, as in hypothesis testing in statistics—you have H0 and H1. So you test the two hypotheses and choose the more probable one. You don’t rule out the second possibility; it’s possible, but it’s much less probable. So in that sense I think the physico-theological proof is excellent. I never spoke about necessity—you can’t talk about necessity. There is always a tiny chance that this whole story is accidental. That’s all true.
[Speaker A] Okay. So maybe actually this is interesting—when atheists talk about how to relate to God or to the soul, they don’t speak in the language of “we don’t know” or “we can’t prove it conclusively,” but the opposite: they’ve already decided what is true. So what do you have to say about the claim that natural selection basically proves that man has no spiritual soul?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, look, first of all, a comment on what you said at the beginning: Dawkins actually is careful. He builds a scale of seven levels. Positive certainty is level seven. He places himself at six. Meaning, he says, listen, I can’t be sure there is no God, but I have no reason at all to assume there is. It’s like Bertrand Russell’s celestial teapot example, which says that if somebody comes to you—even an atheist, right?—and says to you, God revealed Himself to me and told me, I don’t know, put on tefillin or turn the other cheek or whatever it may be. So he says—and I say—I don’t know whether that’s true or not true, but I have no reason at all to assume it’s true. Meaning, it’s not that everything I don’t know is fifty-fifty and I’m in doubt. Even in Jewish law, to be in doubt you need a reason. Meaning, there is… So he says, think for example of someone who came and told you that a small teapot is orbiting the planet Jupiter. So now I don’t know that it isn’t. I haven’t seen it and I have no way to see it. Just a second, I didn’t see it, he says yes, it’s small, hard to see. So what do you say, fifty-fifty? You can’t know, so fifty-fifty? No. I have no reason in the world to assume such a teapot exists, so as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t.
[Speaker A] That’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s more or less what Dawkins says about belief in God. He basically says, look, I can’t be sure there isn’t, but I have no reason at all to assume there is. So therefore I’m six out of seven—yes, I’m a de facto atheist. I can’t tell you with certainty that there is no God, but I have no reason at all to assume there is. That’s regarding your first comment. There are somewhat more clear-headed atheists who say yes, I have no reason to assume there is, even though I agree with you that you can’t say with certainty that there isn’t. So those are the more cautious ones.
[Speaker A] Okay, but let’s say Yuval Noah Harari—in his books he says our soul, there is no soul. It didn’t evolve evolutionarily, so there is no such thing. At least about the soul he talks in that very categorical way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Well, Yuval Noah Harari in general is a very categorical person. His categorical tone is in inverse proportion to his philosophical abilities. He has many philosophical mistakes. He writes well, interesting books, all fine. But serious philosophical mistakes, begging the question, endless fallacies. In any case, for our purposes regarding the soul, the claim is that evolution really cannot prove there is no soul. Evolution assumes there is no soul. In other words, if we are only a body, then evolution shows how we developed. Yaron London once asked me in an interview about the book—I had an interview on his program. So he asked me: at what stage in evolution did the soul enter us, into us? I told him I have no idea. But the fact that I have no idea at what stage it entered doesn’t change anything regarding the principled argument, because I’m not claiming that evolution is the explanation for the coming into being of the soul. The soul is a spiritual matter; evolution deals with our biology and with how our biology develops. How this connection that occurs between soul and body happens—I don’t know. I also don’t know at what stage it happened. At some stage the creatures were apparently developed enough that they could contain a soul or interact with a soul. And the Holy One, blessed be He, in one way or another, either by His own hand or in some other way, implanted souls in us apparently, and that’s it. But I don’t think this touches evolution in any way. I’m not claiming that evolution created the soul, and by the same token evolution cannot prove that there is no soul. Evolution doesn’t deal with souls; it deals with biology. Now you can assume there isn’t one, you can assume there is one. But I do want to make one comment that should be taken seriously. Often people talk about the question of vitalism. Yes, vitalism is the hypothesis that biological matter is matter of a different kind from the matter physics deals with, from inanimate matter, or chemistry, right? Inanimate matter. Today that claim is a dirty word. In other words, vitalism is a dirty word in biological research, and I want to make two comments about that. The first comment is that vitalism has nothing to do with souls. And I, as a dualist who thinks there is a soul, can accept that biological matter is the same matter as in physics. Except that my claim is that beyond biology there is something else in us. Psychology is not a result of biology, but something additional, yes? Or our psyche is something additional. So it has nothing to do with the question of vitalism. Beyond that I want to say: even the categorical decision that rules out vitalism in biology—and I’m not a biologist, I’m not an expert in biology—still my feeling is that it’s too hasty or too categorical. Because we still don’t really have a full picture of how we move from physics, from inanimate matter, to biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Right? Of course, we’ve already closed quite a few stages on that ladder, in that transition, in that reductionist transition, but I don’t think anyone today can say we already have the complete ladder. And yes, it’s true that the assumption that vitalism is false has turned out to be a very fertile and useful assumption in scientific research. That is, as a methodological assumption I think it’s an excellent one. Because the moment you say that matter is vital matter, you’re basically saying fine, then I have nothing to investigate, because it behaves differently from physics, so I won’t even try to reduce biology to physics, because there’s something else there. Now once I say no, it’s not something else, it’s the same matter, then very great efforts are made to connect these things, to show how physics creates biology, and this whole thing with biochemistry and everything, all the intermediate stages—this has turned out to be very fruitful in the methodological sense. And therefore it broke through, it enabled modern science to break through in an extraordinary way. But the fact that a methodological hypothesis turned out to be fertile does not yet necessarily mean that this methodological hypothesis is a claim about reality. In other words, it may very well be that research benefited from our deciding to ignore the non-physical aspects that exist in our body or in our soul, but that doesn’t mean there are no such aspects. It only means that it was very useful to make that separation and investigate the material dimension as if it were physics. Meaning, to assume there is only physics there and let’s see how far we get.
[Speaker A] I understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And we’ve gotten pretty far, and that’s excellent. But the question is whether this will explain everything, whether we can explain everything without resorting to anything else. I think we are very much not there; we’re far from there. I’m not even talking about vitalism. Even vitalism, in my opinion, has not yet been completely ruled out. But souls—there’s nothing to talk about at all. Therefore I say: one must distinguish between a methodological assumption and a claim about reality. And scientists have a tendency to take their methodological assumptions, which turned out to be fertile and efficient and useful, and turn them into—translate them into—claims about reality. And here I strongly object to that, yes? Also in the study of nature, for example, the claim that God is not involved in nature. Yes? That claim is one that has turned out to be very fruitful in scientific research. Because once you say that God is involved in nature, there’s nothing to investigate—every time He does whatever He wants and whatever suits Him, then there are no laws. So what are you going to investigate there? There isn’t—you don’t assume there are rigid, regular laws that you can track. Once you say no, God is not involved at all, then that opens the door to begin testing and investigating the laws, and indeed you discover that there are laws that are very systematic and regular and rigid. Does that mean God is not involved? I have a pretty radical position on this matter—I think that in fact He is not involved. But I say: that’s a methodological assumption of science. To turn it into a factual claim about the world—that’s a logical leap. And just as I said earlier, one has to be very careful with these logical leaps, which scientists have a bit of a hair trigger for. Leaps that they would never make in their scientific research they make very easily in their philosophical conceptions. So I put that here with a warning label, those leaps.
[Speaker A] I see. One of the things you really talk about—I saw a column you wrote in the context of how we see that specifically the atheistic voices and the scientists often do irrational things and make statements that don’t… that don’t fit logically. So one of the things in that context, I saw a column you wrote about something current actually, about the hostage deal not long ago. Toward the end, I think on your blog, you said that we need to move to a rational religious worldview instead of a secular postmodern one in which emotion takes over reason.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that’s not specifically a question of science. I’m not claiming that scientists are emotional. I’m claiming that secular people, and especially those who belong to the left-wing camp, are much more emotional.
[Speaker A] And that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At first glance, if you ask the average person in the street, he’ll tell you the opposite—that religiosity is a matter of experiences and emotions and so on. Simply not true, simply not true. Of course there are many people who are more emotional and less emotional on both sides of the divide. But if you look at the religious approach versus the secular approach—especially, let’s also call it left-wing—there’s a correlation between secularity and the left. It’s not identity, but there is a correlation. I think the emotionalism and emotiveness are found much more on the secular-left side than on the religious-right side, much more. And you can see it every step of the way, and the hostage deal is an excellent example of this, regardless of whether you’re for it or against it. But beyond that, check the form of the arguments, or the type of arguments, that come up on each side. Check who is willing to weigh considerations on both sides and only then form a position for or against. It seems to me that from the right and from the… the fact is that almost all the opponents of the deal are from the religious right.
[Speaker A] Even though that ostensibly—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Has nothing to do with right and left and religiosity and secularity, but the correlation is so unequivocal that it’s totally obvious. In this particular case it seems to me very clear that whoever is emotional will support the deal. That doesn’t mean that whoever supports the deal is emotional—there are also good arguments in favor of the deal. I oppose such deals in general. But I’m saying: there are arguments for the deal; the picture is not unequivocal. But the opposite direction is completely clear. Meaning, whoever is emotional will be in favor of the deal. That’s obvious.
[Speaker A] That doesn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mean that whoever is in favor of the deal is emotional. Those are two different things. But a one-way connection certainly exists here. You can’t see people sitting there in those tunnels, suffering, coming back literally as human skeletons—your heart breaks from that, obviously. Meaning, that’s how it should be: your heart should break when you see something like that. The question is whether this translates automatically into a view of what ought to be done—that’s the question I’m talking about. The fact that our heart hurts over it and that it creates distress in us is obvious; in every person it should create that, and it’s good that it does. The question is whether that is supposed to be translated directly into a course of action, into strategy. That’s the question of emotionalism. Because I think emotionalism doesn’t mean that you have emotion. Emotionalism means letting emotion determine your conduct. Yes, I once saw—the amusing example, maybe I brought it there, I don’t remember anymore—I once sat watching with some of my children some music reality show, I don’t remember which. One of the judges was Shlomi Shabbat, so that gives a hint; I just don’t remember the names of those programs. It wasn’t A Star Is Born, I think—
[Speaker A] I think it was something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there was some woman there who sang, and then Shlomi Shabbat says afterward, when he gives his report on the matter, what he thinks about it, he says: listen, the head says there were these problems and those other problems, but the heart, the heart, the heart… as if with his heart he was completely with her. So he says but the heart—and then he falls silent. So I’m asking there, in front of the TV, I ask the guys: so, what did you decide? So my kids died laughing—they were rolling on the floor. Why? Because Shlomi Shabbat didn’t even bother to say what his decision was. Because if the mind says one thing and the heart says another, you don’t need to add another word. If the heart said that, then obviously that’s what I decided. Meaning, it was obvious to everyone that in the end the heart makes the decision.
[Speaker A] Yes, meaning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have a dissonance: the mind says this, the heart says that. Okay, now tell me what you decided. Meaning, at least tell me that you decided this, tell me you decided… that’s all fine. He didn’t even bother to say what he decided. Meaning, if the heart says so, then obviously the heart determines it. And that’s such a beautiful symptom of the emotional takeover of our thinking in so many fields. And very often emotionalism takes over a person. That’s obvious—we’re human beings, flesh and blood. And the failures involved in following emotionalism rather than reason have existed forever; this is not a new invention. The new invention is that today it has become an ideology. Because of despair of reason, people consciously and intentionally go with the heart. And they despise reason, they despise cold thinking. They look for “where does this speak to me,” “where do I connect to this,” and it turns into an ideology of going with emotions. And that’s the new thing. In other words, failures of going with emotions always existed, but this despair of reason, this postmodernism that creates a kind of despair of logical thinking, despair of reason—suddenly it has turned the fallacy into something that is an ideology from the outset. So now we go with the heart. The mind is the evil inclination. And therefore they perceive rational, logical people as bad people, as impulsive people, as people detached from morality, people that—it’s absurd. Morality is in the head, not in the heart. The heart is input. Once a person asked me in the yeshiva, a student of mine asked me in Yeruham, at the hesder yeshiva where I taught there, he said to me: look, regarding a match, he said to me: look, my heart is with her, there’s wonderful chemistry, everything, but there are things that bother me rationally. What should I do? Does the mind determine or does the heart determine? I told him: only the mind. But of course the heart is one of the inputs the mind has to weigh. Meaning, if you have chemistry with your partner, that’s a very important thing. So the mind has to take that into account too. But in the end, the mind has to decide. And people ignore this point. They understand that it’s important input, and with that I completely agree. But the fact that it’s important input doesn’t mean that that will be the decision. Okay? It’s important input, but ultimately the one who is supposed to do the weighing is the mind. To let the emotion make the decision, not just provide the input for the decision—that’s the emotionalism I’m talking about.
[Speaker A] Interesting. I think one of the things I take generally from this whole conversation, and also from your books, is simply to stop and think. A lot of times we’re inside a social movement or inside this postmodern habit of being emotional.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Our world in general has also become postmodern in practice. Meaning, we live inside a bubble. Postmodernism talks about different narratives, meaning each person has some kind of discourse and bubble within which there are principles and concepts and meanings and connotations and so on. And somehow we are captives of the bubble in which we live, in which we were born, or I don’t know, within which we live. And this collection of bubbles are monads, in Leibniz’s language, which cannot talk to one another because these are different foundational assumptions, different meanings, different culture. It’s something completely different. Now what happens as a result of this is that in practice, in reality, this is what happens to us. Meaning, someone who lives in a right-wing bubble is fed right-wing information, right-wing arguments, right-wing data; everything else is presented as utter nonsense. An echo chamber. And vice versa, yes? The same on the other side. And there are many bubbles, not just right and left. Each person and his bubbles, and of course the algorithms also feed us according to what we’re used to consuming and only sharpen the issue. Now what happens as a result is that I live in a world where my position is the sum of all virtues, there are no arguments against my position, because all the other arguments are either things I don’t know about at all, or they are presented in a distorted and stupid way; facts that support the other side are not brought to my attention at all, and if they are brought then to me they’re fake. Because today the fake device is also a weapon of war. Meaning, not only do people produce fakes in order to fight, but they declare something else fake in order to fight it even though it isn’t fake, it’s a fact. It just doesn’t suit me, so I say fine, today there is fake news, so that’s excellent, it protects me wonderfully. And then what happens is that I’m convinced the pure truth is on my side. And if the others—yes, even though in reality there are usually arguments here and arguments there, no issue is ever a simple issue—and therefore what happens is that I see the other side, someone who holds the opposite opinion, as someone who holds positions for which there is no argument whatsoever in support. Right, there are no arguments. So what can he be? Either wicked or stupid.
[Speaker A] If he is either—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either he’s stupid—he doesn’t understand that there are no arguments—or he’s wicked. Even though he knows the truth is with me, he still went over there. Why? Because the European Union funds him. I don’t know why. He’s wicked, fine? The dark progressive forces are leading him. Yes, this is the demonization of the Har Hamor-style yeshivot and their way of thinking, or anti-thinking, leading people to look at everything through demons that drive these movements. And then what happens is that whoever stands opposite you is either wicked or stupid. There is no other possibility. And if he is wicked or stupid, then of course there’s no reason to listen to him either. If there’s no reason to listen to him, then it’s even clearer that there are no arguments at all against my position and no facts against my position. It’s a positive feedback loop that further strengthens the monadology, the narrativization, where everyone entrenches himself inside his bubble and is sure that this is the pure truth. And then what happens is that you fail to create any discourse. And what frustrates me most is not that others disagree with me—I may be wrong. I’m not a postmodernist, absolutely not. But I also hope I’m not so arrogant. I can understand that I’m wrong about certain things, that there are many arguments I haven’t thought of, facts I haven’t thought of. But what bothers me is not that people disagree with me; what bothers me is that they don’t listen to my arguments. I try at least—maybe I don’t succeed—but I at least try really to listen to the arguments of the other side and the facts of the other side and take them into account. Now I’m also a human being, and I also have my biases, of course. I at least try to work on it. And my feeling is that the person standing opposite me is entrenched; from his point of view the world is entirely children of light versus children of darkness. You can’t talk. And the thing that frustrates me most is the inability to raise arguments and get a listening ear. And all the places that try to fight this and improve the situation—they do it wrong. Why? Because we sit on beanbags around a round table in the Tent of Rabin Tolerance and Brotherhood of Nations, and everyone says his piece and everyone applauds very nicely. Nobody really listens to the other, nobody really weighs the arguments of the other side, but rather we are all terribly polite. Nobody curses the other, everyone speaks very politely and in the end all they work on is politeness—that you should speak politely and not curse him and treat him nicely—and they work on hearing, not listening. Hear what he says. Listening is not just hearing, but really weighing what he says and trying to think whether it has substance. That doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen. Therefore, in my view the greatest trouble—and again this is a corrupting influence of postmodernism—is that since there is despair of reason, there is also no point in listening, because arguments won’t convince anyone, we are all captives of our narrative, so at most we can only be polite. Listen, speak, don’t curse him, speak nicely, use pleasant and nice terminology and everything is fine—and in my view this is destructive. That politeness drives me crazy much more than all the curses. I wish they would curse me, because if they curse me it means they are somehow relating to my arguments, they are listening, it upsets them. Okay, so at least there is some chance of penetrating that wall, maybe yes maybe no. Someone who responds politely—he’s lost, I don’t speak with him at all. I want them to curse. I want them to raise arguments, to get angry, to revile and blaspheme me—but to do it after they’ve weighed my arguments and seen that I’m talking nonsense. Then curse. That’s why all this huge effort on polite treatment of one another irritates me so much, because it’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You don’t create discourse that way. You create, like Leibniz’s monads: I speak to you, you speak to me, but nobody really listens to the other. Basically each of us is speaking to himself, and we politely hear each other—not listen, but hear. We hear but we do not listen.
[Speaker A] How do we develop this in—say, I also studied in Yeruham—say, how do you develop this in first-year students who are now arriving at the yeshiva, or even earlier, a young guy comes—what would you recommend reading or doing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the way to do it—I once gave a course at Kiryat Ono, in the Haredi branch, on critical thinking. There are courses in critical thinking. One of the exercises you can do in this context is to make you defend the position that you think has absolutely nothing to it, that you think anyone who says it is simply either wicked or stupid, anyone who doesn’t think like you. Now take his position, and now you have to be the one who convinces me of that position. Build good arguments, gather data. At first you’ll do it through the motions, but I think that slowly you’ll suddenly see—oops, wow, actually it’s not complete nonsense. You’re not necessarily going to change your position, but at least you won’t see me as stupid or wicked. Rather, you’ll understand that I have sides—you can agree, you can disagree—but that in itself will also purify the discourse. In the end it will also purify the discourse. The point is that if you work on purifying the discourse as such, that’s not treating the problem. If you treat the problem, that will also purify the discourse. If in the end you understand that I’m not wicked or stupid but just think differently from you, then there will be discussion, then you’ll hear my arguments, my facts, and we’ll try to see who is right, and maybe we’ll remain in dispute, maybe yes maybe no, but you won’t hate me, I think, because you’ll understand that I have a different position. And it could even be that maybe you’ll be persuaded, or maybe we’ll discover that we’re actually much closer than we thought, because you also agree there are arguments in my favor and I also agree there are arguments in your favor, even though in the final analysis I weigh everything and remain with this view and you remain with that one—but that’s completely different. Here’s an example I often bring in this context, in the heated arguments against the reform, even before—today it’s come back—but right before the war. So think about an ad from the supporters of the reform, a typical ad—how was it built? True, maybe in certain points they went too far, but reform has to be done, the current situation is impossible, right? What did an ad of the opponents of the reform look like? Look, true, reform needs to be done, but they went too far and it’s excessive. Do you understand that they’re saying the same thing?
[Speaker A] Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The opponents of the reform and the supporters of the reform are saying the same thing. On both sides they are basically saying reform needs to be done, but Yariv Levin and Rothman went too far. Okay, so we actually agree. It’s just that you look at the half-full cup and I look at the half-empty cup, but both of us perceive the cup in exactly the same way. There may be differences in degree, but broadly speaking we both understand that the cup is not completely full; there is an empty part and a full part. But nobody lets this pass his lips, and each person lives with the feeling that either the cup is completely full or completely empty, so it’s impossible to conduct a discourse. But if you understand that reform needs to be done—and you agree—and I also agree that they went too far, then let’s see what we agree on and what we don’t. We may actually discover that we completely agree and there is no difference at all, no difference at all. It’s just that you hate Rothman and Yariv Levin because they want to fill the quarter of the cup that is empty, and I’m in favor of them because they are filling the three-quarters of the cup that is full, okay? But all of us agree that the cup must not be filled completely. It’s only a question—suddenly it becomes a personal question—whether I love Yariv Levin and Rothman or whether I hate them. But in terms of the positions themselves, I agree with you completely. We are in the same place, completely. And I met people whom I tried to draw out and talk with on the substance of the matter, and I discovered that the people from the opposing camp and the people from the supporting camp say exactly the same thing. There isn’t even any difference in degree.
[Speaker A] So what’s the problem? Listening?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all the listening—the lack of listening creates a situation where you’re sure that the reform is the sum of all defects and he’s sure that the reform is the sum of all virtues. But when you ask him about the plan on its own terms, he’ll tell you: look, they went too far, it’s true that a change needs to be made. Suddenly you discover that they actually agree on everything. But they’re not willing to admit that there is a half-cup here; one says full cup, one says empty cup. And then automatically anyone who stands against me is either wicked or stupid or both. Okay? And you don’t listen, and slowly you enter a situation where you yourself perceive your own position incorrectly. And you’re sure that everything they do is the destruction of democracy, and the other side is sure that everything they do is completely legitimate, because it’s majority rule, what’s the problem? And both are wrong. That’s not true. There are illegitimate things and there are things that need to be done—in short, everything is true. But if we get used to discussing the content, then we’ll discover that there is a half-full cup and a half-empty cup. And I think 90 percent of the public, apart from some screamers on both sides, agree completely about what needs to be done here. Almost completely, with differences in nuance. The agreements are almost total. Completely. The differences are personal differences. Meaning, whether you love Rothman or hate Rothman—that’s the argument. By the way, that’s not an argument I dismiss. Because if someone says that Rothman is a dangerous person, say for the sake of discussion, and he’s very afraid that Rothman will manage these matters even though he agrees that reform needs to be done—fine, I don’t dismiss that argument. But I’m only saying: let’s do that after we’ve agreed on what needs to be done. Because after we’ve agreed on what needs to be done, you say yes, but Rothman is problematic because he wants to fill the last quarter of the cup too. Okay, so maybe there I’ll be with you, no problem. But agree with me that the first three-quarters need to be filled. Okay, so let’s go with that. Then we’ll depose Rothman, find someone else who will fill only three-quarters of a cup for us. But we immediately move to discussing Rothman. Yes, never mind—the other side too, it’s not important, I just took an example. Very often the discourse is so emotional and so inattentive to arguments and so personal that even if it is true that there is a problem with the personalities, and in part that’s true, you can’t make progress this way. Meaning, then I’m in favor of the personality and he’s against the personality—what do you want us to do now? In a discussion you can discuss arguments; you can’t discuss personalities.
[Speaker A] You can discuss—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Arguments, and after we discuss arguments and agree on what we’re for and what we’re against, then we’ll see what we do about the personalities.
[Speaker A] Okay, so we need to listen, learn to listen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to do deliberate exercises. It’s not enough just to talk. You have to do deliberate exercises in listening—not hearing, listening. And you need to present positions that you despise, that you think… this is one of the exercises I gave the group there in the course. I had them read—these were Haredi guys—I had them read articles by leftists, anti-Semites. I told them: now you have to present his argument in the best possible way, with his assumptions, with his conclusions, and defend it with all your might. And at first it was as hard for them as the splitting of the sea, until they got used to it. And once they got used to it, suddenly they saw that he isn’t talking nonsense. Usually in the end they still didn’t agree with him, but he isn’t talking nonsense—he has an angle. That angle has substance, or he presented it too extremely because he himself is extreme, fine. But deal with the arguments. You’ll see—if you look at the arguments, suddenly you’ll discover that the people around you aren’t really that far from you. And if he’s wrong, he’s wrong by a quarter of a cup, not by a whole cup. And that’s different. The moment you understand that he isn’t evil or stupid, you’ll also listen to him, and then you’ll discover once again that he isn’t evil or stupid. It reinforces itself, exactly the way the opposite perception reinforces itself. If you don’t listen to him, then he’s even more evil and stupid, obviously—it feeds itself. If you do listen to him, then he’s less evil and stupid, and that also feeds itself. We just need to reverse the trend. If we reverse the trend, it’ll already build itself. As for the question of how to do that—I don’t think the way… I’ve already been in countless forums on what to do about the situation, right, and all kinds of discussions like that, of every possible kind, with all sorts of people, from Brothers in Arms and brothers not for the economy and brothers for whatever you want, from every direction. The only way to handle this is to run seminars that have nothing to do with current events at all. Seminars in critical thinking on made-up topics, on topics about Indonesians in Greenland. Meaning, what does an Indonesian do when he gets to Greenland? In other words, something that has nothing to do with us at all—and to try to do very, very Sisyphean and meticulous work on thinking, on listening, on formulating arguments. Schools should have introduced programs like that. I have absolutely no idea what to do with the situation right now on the scale of, okay, what do we do today in public discourse. There is no public discourse, and there’s nothing to do about it. No reconciliation tents in Rabin Square are going to solve the problem. People are messed up to the core, I mean, no reconciliation tent is going to help here. You need to rebuild the people and society from scratch. Yes—their ability to think, their willingness to think, not their ability. In principle, the abilities exist, but there’s no willingness to make use of those abilities. Yes, and that has to start in school and at the university. At the university you certainly don’t learn how to think. Right. University lecturers, I think, are one of the least thoughtful populations there is.
[Speaker A] Wow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The most emotional people, the most dogmatic, the most herd-like there are. I see it around me and I’m genuinely shocked.
[Speaker A] Wow. The truth is that in reserve duty there’s some kind of experience like that, where people from the extremes suddenly meet each other and suddenly live together too. So there’s something there that softens people a bit. Meaning, a lot of the time you hear heated arguments, but in the end it’s between two people who are very close
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because
[Speaker A] just physically, they’re very close.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he can’t allow himself to hate him—he lives with him,
[Speaker A] meaning, shared fate.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, yes. So you have to listen to him and understand what he thinks.
[Speaker A] Yes, and then suddenly sometimes you see… yes, but that’s a very… in the end not everyone gets into that situation. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are a lot of optimistic people—I wish I were that optimistic too—that this war will bring about some kind of change, because there were a lot of reservists. Yes. And those reservists come back after certain encounters that maybe will also manage to radiate out into civilian life.
[Speaker A] Right, so I heard someone say not to create a party for reservists, even though reservists are suddenly a very strong base right now, because specifically we want the left-wing reservists to go to left-wing parties and the right-wing ones to go to right-wing parties and moderate the voices a bit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether they’ll manage to get elected in those parties, because those parties are looking for very sharp, dogmatic people.
[Speaker A] Right, right, that’s their world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A kind of middle-of-the-road person like that—so maybe apparently you won’t get elected there.
[Speaker A] Yes, right. Okay, so on that note, thank you very much, Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, for your time and also for the book and your other fascinating books. Thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly, goodbye.