Dr. Michael Abraham – Does God Really Exist? – Daniel Dushi

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, because here we really are already getting to the existence of God, and not to His goodness in relation to suffering in the world, where in my view that isn’t relevant. The question of the existence of God—here you can start discussing the claim you raised earlier. But the point is that the neo-Darwinians assume the existing system of laws and say: within it, I can explain to you why life emerges. But when I ask the question, I’m asking it outside the laws, not within the laws. So I ask: who created this system of laws? Who created a system of laws within which, without a guiding hand, life comes into being? After all, that’s an unbelievable phenomenon. I mean, think about a washing machine—maybe, I don’t remember if we talked about this last time. A washing machine: you see that it works in a perfect way. A factory works perfectly; every department knows, every laborer and every worker knows; everything is coordinated in an amazing way. You say to yourself: there must be some brilliant manager here who knows how to run this whole thing. The atheist next to you says: what are you talking about? Look here on the wall—there’s a list of rules telling everyone what they have to do at every stage. You don’t need to assume any manager. What would you say to him? You’d say: yes, but who wrote the system of rules on the board? The manager is the one who wrote the rules. The fact that he chose to manage through rules written on the board doesn’t mean he isn’t the manager.

[Daniel Dushi] The atheist will say that it was a sequence of mistakes that caused the laws to come into being.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. Even so, I don’t see it—the atheist can’t explain anything about the formation of the laws. He isn’t dealing with the formation of the laws; he’s dealing with what happens within the laws. Given that these are the laws, what happens?

[Daniel Dushi] You answered me about this earlier when you said—I said, the system updates itself based on mistakes. I didn’t say the fundamental one; leave me alone with the fundamental one. But I understand. Still, the atheist would say there’s no fixed lawfulness—so what is it that updates the system? What do you mean there’s no lawfulness? Does he deny that there are laws of nature? No—the laws of nature are built through an updating process. Through what process? Fine, through a process. But that updating process is itself also a process; I can describe it too. You’re basically just moving to second-order laws, and I’m asking you what about the first-order laws. In the end, there is some system of laws within which the whole story unfolds. Atheists usually cling specifically to science, and when you cling to science, you’re saying there is some very orderly system of laws here that we understand more and more all the time. Within it, the whole story unfolds, with all the dynamics and all the changes and everything. Everything happens within the framework of the laws. Meaning, the speed of light, Planck’s constant, the mass of the electron, and the gravitational constant don’t update themselves. They’re the givens; within them, things get updated. Stars are formed and stars are destroyed and black holes and things—there’s lots of dynamics—but that dynamics takes place within a system of laws that is a rigid system. We’re constantly working to discover it. So I don’t think it’s rational to deny that there is some framework of laws within which all the dynamism and all the changes occur. And I’m asking about that. In other words, the question is basically: who is the lawgiver of those laws? And there is no evolutionary explanation for that question. This is not God of the gaps. Meaning, here you can’t tell me, look, this is a gap, we don’t understand it, in the future we’ll investigate more and we’ll understand. No—you won’t understand it in the future either. This is an essential gap. Why? Because how would you understand it in the future? Let’s try to think what the future could possibly contain. What could the explanation for the emergence of the laws be? A scientific explanation as an alternative to saying it’s the Holy One, blessed be He. One explanation says there’s another, broader theory—as you were basically saying earlier—from which one can derive the various scientific theories we have, say the four fundamental laws of physics, the fundamental forces in physics. But that system too is also a system of laws, and I can ask what’s going on with it—so you haven’t explained anything. It’s turtles all the way down, you know. You can’t explain this turtle by means of that turtle that carries it. In the end, where is the bottom turtle? What is the whole chain standing on? Meaning, in the end there is some basic system of laws. After we discover it—Einstein’s dream, yes, of a unified field theory—even when we discover it, there will still be some system of laws, or even one law, but you’ll have to explain why it is this way and not otherwise, within which everything unfolds—so you haven’t gained anything. The only way out of this mess, to close this gap if we treat it as a gap, is if the final system is a purely mathematical system. That is, the constants in physics, for example—they usually talk about the values of the constants, fine-tuning—the constants would be constants like in mathematics, like pi, like e, numbers in mathematics that simply describe relations between things, necessary relations between things. It’s not the result of observation; it’s the result of the structure of the things themselves. Then you could actually say: if in the end we discover some such mathematical structure that won’t require any observations—meaning its internal necessity will dictate all the values of the constants and all the forms of the laws we know in the various natural sciences, or in the sciences generally—then that could close the gap. But the meaning of that, if something like that were to happen in the end—and I think there’s no chance of that, but if it did happen—that would mean physics is a branch of mathematics. In other words, you wouldn’t need any observations at all; you could derive everything from mathematical rules without observations and without anything else. It would be a necessary world. A world that is entirely necessary; there could not have been another world. Meaning, only such a world could exist because these are mathematical constraints, just as the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle must be pi. Okay? Because there’s no other possibility—it’s a mathematical relation. So if all the constants in physics were like pi, that would close this gap. Nobody believes that today. I don’t know a single atheist today who believes that. Everyone understands that physics is an observational science and not a branch of mathematics. In other words, the value of the electron’s mass is not like pi. The electron’s mass could have been different too; if the laws of nature were different, the electron’s mass would have been different. Okay, so really, the general question of existence seems to me to be something we won’t be able to solve here in a conversation, let’s put it that way, and it really does seem too broad. That’s why I wanted to start with the problem of suffering. I still haven’t reached a definite conclusion regarding what you say about suffering, but let’s move on to evil, and the way I think to get there is again—I’m specifically challenging the moral aspect of God, okay, less His existence. This is a verse you surely know, the instruction to destroy Amalek, 1 Samuel 15. It appears in the Torah. It appears in the Torah, yes. No—Samuel is already a prophet. I’m saying it already appears in the Torah: “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” Yes, yes, but in 1 Samuel 15 what happens is that Saul basically spares Agag, he doesn’t kill Agag, and then Samuel tells him that this is against what God asked. So that means God wants the total destruction of a certain nation. I—it may be that for some of the listeners, and maybe also for you, this works out absolutely, but to an ear that’s less secular—if not atheistic, yes—it doesn’t really work. Why would there be such a demand from a God who is all—good. I’ll answer you on two levels. One level—I even wrote about this on my website—I think that after October 7 this question becomes much less sharp. I’ll tell you why. And I’m not going to say all Gazans are Amalek. But I am going to say that I’m beginning to understand that there can be a situation in which the right way is simply to destroy the entire group. Meaning, there is a group that has reached such a fundamental level of evil, that raises all its children—and again, I’m not talking right now about the Gazans, but I’m using this example to bring something that was very far from us much closer to our intellect. And I’m trying to say: just think hypothetically—if there is some group that is entirely a group of war and extermination of peoples, and theft and murder and rape and massacre and looting and so on, and they raise their children this way too—again, I’m not talking about the Gazans right now—I’m saying, but I’m using this as an example to bring something that was very far from us much closer to our minds. And I’m trying to say: think for a moment hypothetically—if there’s some group that is entirely a war-and-extermination-of-peoples group, and theft and murder and rape and massacre and robbery and so on, and they raise their children in that, only that, that’s their whole career, the whole group lives around that—let’s say hypothetically, okay? Let’s say there is such a group. Can you understand that in such a situation the moral instruction would be to destroy them? To destroy them—meaning there’s no—you don’t—even children, because the children will turn out that way. Unless—if I can take the children, I don’t know, adopt them and raise them differently, I’m not a determinist. Meaning, I think that if I raised them, fine, then I’d do that. Wait, but hold on—for a second, things like this were said even here on my podcast after October 7 a few times, let’s say—statements whose aim was total destruction—but even there I didn’t hear the totality in the sense of the seed of Amalek, to the point that that’s why I gave the example from Samuel, that even leaving the king alive as a slave was absolutely unthinkable—that is, total destruction. You’re saying it could be that we would want one and a half million Gazans to be completely wiped out? Yes. Yes, absolutely yes. Including the very last child? Yes, including the very last child. I’m saying again—and I’m not speaking about the concrete Gazans, I’m using the Gazans as an example of a hypothetical situation. But picture them in front of your eyes—I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about a hypothetical situation. I don’t think they’re there yet, though not all that far. And the claim—the claim is that if there is a group, as I described to you, that is entirely a terrorist organization, entirely—not Gaza, something else hypothetical on an island in the Pacific Ocean—entirely a terrorist organization; that’s how they raise the children, that’s how they educate them, a gang of murderers, that’s their whole culture on earth, that’s what they do, okay? Nothing besides that. Can you understand that in such a situation I say, okay, leave no trace of them? Meaning, there’s nothing—you must not leave anything of them. Now again, what does “anything” mean? If you look in Jewish law, Jewish law put many restrictions on this total commandment of destroying Amalek, precisely for these considerations. And the claim is, look, if you manage to remove a child who hasn’t actually done anything—you’re destroying him because of his future, but right now he hasn’t done anything—if you can remove him, someone once asked me why not take them for adoption? By all means, let them be adopted. If they’ll be taken for adoption, everything is fine. But once you have the group here and you have no way to take someone for adoption or something of that kind, I absolutely understand the instruction to destroy the whole group, unequivocally. You know it says in the Talmud that descendants of Haman taught Torah in Bnei Brak. How can that be if they had to destroy all of Amalek? Haman was an Amalekite; they should have destroyed all the Amalekites. The answer is no—if you succeed, yes? Assuming Bnei Brak is a positive place, I’m not sure. But if you manage to remove some such Amalekites, who really won’t pose a future threat, then indeed no. But under that hypothetical assumption—which with respect to Amalek probably wasn’t hypothetical; that was probably the nature of that people, that’s how I understand it from the biblical and rabbinic descriptions—if that’s so, I’m entirely with that instruction, I have no problem with it. Let’s make this clearer, because you gave the example from the Talmud; the Talmud isn’t God’s direct words. Right, for me it’s one corpus. Okay, that’s another discussion. I don’t know whether in the Bible by itself… I understand. So let’s take the things from the Bible, because basically my question is: what does total destruction actually achieve if, when we look objectively at the people of Israel, it sounds to me like this can only come from within, meaning the people of Israel is supposedly the main hero of the story, and then absolute evil can only be relative to it. Why? I don’t understand. Why are you assuming that? No. If there were a nation of murderers whose whole essence on earth was to massacre Zimbabweans, I’d do the same to them. Meaning, I’m saying: why leave such a live land mine alive? It’s simply a ticking bomb. To leave it alive is just absurd. I’ll tell you more than that: I have not just a feeling but a clear diagnosis that in recent generations morality has shifted more and more into the realm of emotion and not the realm of intellect, and the revolt against statements of this kind—this kind—is often rooted in emotional reactions. You—we all have a hard time with an instruction to wipe out a people, including children, including everything. And I think that’s a serious illness. The illness is not that you feel that way. It’s good that you feel that way; I feel that way too. It’s very bad if you let those feelings run you. And now we go to current events, yes—the hostages deal. My very clear feeling, regardless of the question whether it was good to make the deal or not—in my opinion it wasn’t—but regardless of that question, the discourse is a distorted discourse. Because people are operating here from the gut. And if you’re right, then present arguments and we can debate them; it could be that you’re right that this deal should be made. But you can’t give me these emotional arguments, how can you leave them there, they’re suffering terribly. I agree that they’re suffering terribly and my heart aches over it; really, I’m not saying that just as lip service. But there are many considerations there that need to be taken into account, and we need to see whether yes or no. Same thing with Amalek. So with Amalek, you tell me after I explain to you that hypothetical phenomenon, and I think there a reasonable person should say yes, that’s what needs to be done there. And you tell me, wait, but that can’t be, the mind can’t tolerate such a thing. Are you willing to live with… The answer is yes, I’m willing to live with it. So wait—then my objection here is not emotional, specifically, but intellectual. I’m not convinced that a God who wants absolute good would command the killing of a people. Why? If that people is a ticking bomb, murderous, threatening you—do you agree that God would command killing them? Without saying Gaza is Amalek and everyone there has to be killed. You suddenly see something that you couldn’t imagine until two years ago. I didn’t live through the Holocaust and all that; until two years ago I couldn’t imagine how such a situation could exist. I’m saying after seeing Gaza, I know such a situation can exist. I think the Gazans haven’t reached that point yet; they’re not very far from it, by the way, but they haven’t reached it. But I do understand that such a situation can happen. Let’s try—yes, let’s do this in order to distance emotion a little from the discussion. You mentioned the Holocaust—that really may be an example that would be somewhat less emotional for us right now. Even there, the victory of good, supposedly according to our historical narrative, was, let’s say, the destruction of many of the Nazis and many of the Japanese. Not the total destruction of a people. Meaning, you can reach the same result without the total destruction of that people. So here too I don’t see what God would have required the destruction of that entire people for, if we see a situation where it wasn’t necessary and it still achieved the benefit. Okay, but here there’s a logical jump. You see that with the Germans it wasn’t necessary, but I’m talking to you about that hypothetical—or not hypothetical—case where it is necessary. Where the German culture was not essentially Nazi. Nazism—no, certainly not. Nazism was some phenomenon, some temporary madness that seized that people, and before and after it you can find its cultural roots, but it’s not Nazism. Fine. Do you know what the actual description of Amalek was in that context? What do you mean? The description was of a people whose entire culture had turned into murderers, as you describe. Yes, that is the culture. Yes. Now I’m saying again exactly what I told you before: if you’re claiming against the Holy One, blessed be He—how can You command this?—you have to show me that Amalek wasn’t like that. The burden of proof is on you. Because you’re making a claim against the Holy One, blessed be He—how can You command the killing of an entire people? Now, if there is a situation in which there is justification to issue such a command, then in order to ask that question you need to show me that Amalek wasn’t in that situation. Or before that—before that—I think you only need to show that you’re giving justification for carrying out this mass destruction on utilitarian grounds. I’m challenging only the utility itself. Meaning, even if they were all swept along and they became—Not swept along, that’s exactly the point. The Germans were swept along, and even there not all of them. The Gazans today aren’t? The Gazans today, I don’t know. Gazans are worse than Germans in that sense. Not in the sense that they are morally worse, no, I’m not talking about that. The situation there is more essential. Meaning, with the Germans, I don’t think that if World War II had ended there would suddenly have emerged a liberal Western democracy where everyone could conduct discourse as equals in a normal country. Do you see such a thing happening in Gaza after total victory? Isn’t it a leadership problem? No, it’s not a leadership problem; it’s a cultural problem. Their culture is rotten. They are a rotten and primitive culture—sorry that I’m speaking this way, but that’s the reality. And I’m not talking about essentialism. I do think they’re human beings like me and you, and in principle they can change culture. But as long as the culture is like that, this is not Nazism. In Nazism, Nazism was a phenomenon that in its essence was transient. There are neo-Nazis today too, but I mean Germanness in general. No, you also don’t know what would have happened had they won the war. No, okay, I don’t know what would have happened if they had won. I see what happened when they lost. And I see what’s happening now. It’s not the same thing. Did they lose? Listen, the destruction happening today in Gaza is a thousand times greater than what happened in Germany after World War II. Yes. So that doesn’t count as losing? You know why not? Because they’re Gazans and not Germans. Because with them it doesn’t change after that destruction, so they really didn’t lose. Aren’t you mixing emotion in here in the sense of “us”? Not at all. It’s an assessment—an entirely cold assessment, in my view. I’m simply looking at reality and saying what it says. I’m not saying I have no emotions in this context; I’m saying they don’t run me. I think this is a sober look at reality. And I think anyone who doesn’t see reality that way is simply not sober. Then sober me up. I’ve had several conversations like this here that showed me more and more the severity of the situation. Nobody can—I don’t see a scenario in which I’m persuaded that the Gazans are—and I’m not saying this sarcastically, but really, convince me—that the Gazans may and can reach a state in which the very last baby there has to be destroyed so that the world will be better. So I’m explaining to you that same state I described earlier, which is not far from Gaza’s condition today if you’re not stubborn, in my opinion. If you’re not stubborn, yes. If you look soberly at reality, and you look soberly at reality, you see an entire public being killed, their homes destroyed, they suffer a thousand times more than we do from everything that happened there, and they don’t give up for a moment. They don’t give up for a moment—not on the desire that Gaza behave properly, not on the desire that we not be here but be in the sea. They democratically choose a terrorist organization as their government, one that leads them to dimensions of destruction like this. They support it. They don’t retreat in any substantial way. At most, here and there, they complain about the suffering caused to them, but nothing changes essentially. Meaning, the moment they are no longer under threat of such suffering, it will go back to being Hamas with all the terror and everything. Okay, but you touched here on an element that is similar between Amalek and Gaza. And here I’ll make a claim I don’t believe, but people in the world do believe it: are the Jews obligated to be here? If you take us out of the equation, maybe they’re not so evil. I’m not discussing at all the question whether I’m obligated to be here. I want to be here. And if someone threatens me, I will destroy him. That’s all. I’m not going to run away in order not to destroy him. If by his behavior he causes me to need to destroy him, then he can deal with that. I’m not the one who needs to go. I’ll give you a halakhic example—it’s not simple in Jewish law, but I can prove it, okay? Someone threatens you with a gun and says, give me a shekel or I’ll kill you. Now, you can kill him—he’s a pursuer, right? But you can also give him a shekel and get rid of him. Are you allowed to kill him? In my view, not only are you allowed to, it is proper to kill him. He’s threatening me. Now true, I can give him a shekel and be done with it, but it isn’t right to surrender to his demand and let him dictate the matter in order not to destroy him. That’s absurd. Meaning, if you want me not to destroy you, excellent—let’s shake hands and part as friends. But if you exploit the fact that I won’t destroy you in order to gain achievements, I’m not going to leave here just in order not to destroy you. I completely understand. I’ll say something that I know last time too we got into—our discussion didn’t go well in this context because you don’t like psychological attacks. But I’m still going to do it, with your permission, and I hope you’ll take it not emotionally but intellectually. That’s fine. There’s a term from a book behind you by Robert Greene called—there’s a chapter in his book on the laws of human nature where he talks about biases. And one of the biases is called confirmation bias. I claim that maybe we’re falling here into confirmation bias: first I assume that we have to be here, and then afterward people become evil in response to that. Historically, we’re newer here than they are, supposedly. And again, I’m pro-Zionism, I’m here, I’m Israeli and I’m Jewish, but I’m casting doubt on that initial assumption, because without it the absolute evil that makes me want to destroy them totally is doubtful. No, I answered that before and I’ll answer it again. I’m not assuming at all that we have to be here. It’s enough for me that I want to be here. Why is that enough? It’s enough for me. I want to be here. Now, if because of that someone reaches a level of evil where all he wants is to destroy me, then I’ll kill him. But what if I want to be in your house? No, I’m not talking about—for them, that’s how they see it. Very nice, but not from my perspective. That’s exactly the point. There’s a difference between saying I must be here and saying I have the right to be here. I’m not talking about entering your house—certainly not. No, I could also be in Australia. But do you accept that in their eyes, and in the eyes of many in the world, this is not your house? Okay. And what am I supposed to do with that now? No, just then to relate to their absolute evil that you put in question, that is—No, the argument I’m making here is not at all a question of evil; this is not punishment. I’m not talking about punishment at all. I’m talking about prevention. It’s not punishment. I’m talking about self-defense. I’m not killing them because they are absolutely evil. I’m killing them because they are absolutely harmful, not because they are absolutely evil. Even if from their perspective I can understand how they see me and why they want to kill me and remove me from here, the fact is that this is what they want to do. Now if I have another solution without killing them, then obviously I’m forbidden to kill anyone, no question. Example: leave? No, leaving is not a solution. Leaving is like giving you the shekel. No, because according to my view I have the right to be here. According to their view I don’t. Now if as a result they are destroyed, let them draw the conclusions and give up their desires. Why should I give up my desires so they won’t be destroyed? It’s ridiculous. Not because I deserve it—that’s what I’m saying. I don’t need to reach that religious view, yes, “To your seed I will give this land.” No—even as a secular person I’d do the same thing. Contrary to that religious demagoguery that always says to secular people: you’re here by force of the biblical title deed anyway, so how are you using the Bible if you—but nonsense, not true. As long as I have a connection to this place—there was no other sovereignty here. There were other people here, and that’s perfectly fine; I would have left them here together with me if they were willing to function together. They weren’t willing to function together. They didn’t accept the Partition Plan. I think it’s mine too, but at least I have the right to be here. They think not; I understand that. Now the question is what they do with what they think. If as a result of what they think they become a terrorist organization that there is no way to deal with except by destroying it entirely, then I’ll destroy it entirely. But okay, I still—do you understand the claim I made about the initial assumption, that once we remove it everything changes? No, I understand it but don’t accept it. But do you understand it? Of course I understand it. Okay, so given that there is that initial assumption, I think most of the people listening right now, the vast majority, will agree with you, but at least there are some who, as secular people, will be able to cast doubt on the idea. Then let them go—I don’t understand, who’s stopping them? Let them go to Australia. Ah, that’s a whole other discussion, but I want us to stay specifically in the moral context of mass destruction. No—what do you want? For me to stay here and commit suicide? What? Either I leave for Australia, I understand, so let’s leave for Australia. If I stay here, what are you proposing? In order not to kill them, let them kill me and let me commit suicide? So I’m saying: decide. If you think we should leave because you truly think we have no business here and they’re right and it’s forbidden to kill them and so on—which I don’t agree with you about at all. But if that’s what you think, then move to Australia. I understand the claim. But I think I’m staying here. Now I have two options: either I’ll be destroyed or I’ll destroy them. Now what are you proposing? To let myself be destroyed? Wait—but let’s leave that aside. I deliberately didn’t bring the Gazan example, so let’s stick with Amalek then. Okay. There it’s the same case? Yes. Describe to me the same thing more in the context of—The same thing. It’s a people whose whole life is built on robbery and murder and theft. It’s a people that raises its children toward that, for whom that is all its education, all its culture; it’s collective there. It’s not some insane brainwashing of ten Nazi years, from ’33 to ’45, ’32 to ’45. You see that it is pathological in the German world. Not because they’re Ashkenazim. Just check them and you’ll see. Meaning, they weren’t Nazis all the time. People always find roots in their children’s stories and so on; there’s a kind of Teutonic cruelty there, something terrible. Fine, I understand that. But you don’t kill people because they write children’s stories like that, right? The practical eruption of actual evil was a local eruption that passed as it came. It simply passed. So there too, mass destruction is really an act of prevention. Correct, it’s only an act of prevention. Where that’s needed as an act of prevention, you do it; where it’s not needed, you don’t. So why is there this context of every last one, including not taking the king as a prisoner of war? Because the claim—the claim is that if there isn’t a final destruction, it will return. The king is a dominant figure. On the contrary, the king bothers me much less than if some random—by the way, some remained. I told you: descendants of Haman taught Torah in Bnei Brak, meaning there were Amalekites left afterward too, evidently. But that’s already the Talmud. No, it’s obvious that Amalekites remained. They didn’t destroy all the Amalekites there; there is no indication that they destroyed all of them. Out of the army, the soldiers were killed, and the commander of the army—the king—remained. They didn’t kill the entire Amalekite nation. No, no such thing is being spoken about. Oh—that’s what I understood, which is why the discussion… No, obviously some remained. What do you mean? An Amalekite convert comes to ask; there are all sorts of cases. We got to babies and, you know, the very last toddlers. No, so I’m telling you—first of all I’m speaking about the biblical command. You wanted to discuss the biblical command. In the Oral Torah, in Jewish law, they put reservations on these things. According to Maimonides, for example, one offers Amalek peace in war. If he accepts, you don’t go to war with him—not only do you not kill everyone. The king who remains is a symbol of the whole thing; he generated it all. Specifically regarding him I’m much less troubled by this instruction—one should cut off the snake’s head. Yes, let’s put him aside. Let’s go to the very last toddler, and there too—they left, they left not only the very last toddler, they left all the toddlers. They left them. Their descendants remained alive and existing; they continue to appear on the stage of history afterward too. It’s written that way in Jewish law too. Meaning, there are many, many limitations or reservations on this commandment of killing Amalek, because they really understand the biblical command as a sort of direction-setting statement. They say: evil must be dealt with without sentimentality. But practically, if you have a way to maneuver and solve the problem without that, then the Sages found ways to do it. If that’s what I had understood, I wouldn’t even have raised it for discussion. I understood it to mean destruction down to the very last one. But wait—I’ll just say that earlier you did defend that idea in the sense of every last one, when you gave the thought experiment that if this were happening now, for argument’s sake, in Gaza. So one, you’re saying that’s not the case? No, I’m saying this. You presented the question on two levels. After I commented, you said let’s speak on two levels. We’ll speak on the biblical level: if you read the Bible literally, you have to destroy everyone. After that there is the halakhic level: Oral Torah, Sages, and so on. On the biblical level I gave you the Gaza example, showing that even the biblical discussion taken literally, I can justify in certain situations. Beyond that, you’re right that in places where it isn’t necessary, where prevention doesn’t require total destruction, then indeed Jewish law and the Sages did put restrictions on it. But I’m saying that on the principled level, I’m prepared to accept even a total command if it is necessary in order to deal with the problem. And therefore I say the same thing about—the statement about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza, which everyone was so horrified by—I don’t remember who in the government said it. Amichai Eliyahu? Yes, someone said it. I wasn’t horrified by it at all. I don’t agree—I wrote a column about it too, explaining why I don’t agree and why in my opinion that isn’t—and I also had a podcast with someone about that issue—but as for the statement itself, I’m absolutely not horrified by it. It needs to be discussed on its merits. Meaning: have we reached a state where that is the only solution, because without it we won’t solve the problem and we’ll just constantly remain under threat of destruction? If that’s the case, then an atomic bomb on Gaza—absolutely. If that’s not the case, if I have a more proportionate, let’s call it humane, way to deal with the matter such that I survive at one cost or another but don’t have to reach genocide, then fine, don’t do that. Okay, here we’re already doing halakhic interpretations at the biblical level, and let’s return to the existence of God in this context. You do accept, and it seems entirely possible to you, the existence of an omnipotent God with absolute goodness and completely good intentions, for whom this is His demand, including every last one. Absolutely. I would expect Him to make such a demand if He is absolutely good. Only such a demand can express absolute goodness. Meaning, if there is evil that you cannot deal with in any other way except by destroying it, then absolute good must command its destruction. If He does not command destroying it, then He is not absolute good, because He is allowing evil to continue operating. What kind of thing is that? I’m saying this is simple logic. If you don’t look at it emotionally but logically, in my eyes this is the obvious logical conclusion. When you have such a mine, such a seeping pool of poison, yes? It will never end; it only keeps destroying, killing, and raping, and that is its whole culture. I expect a moral people, a moral God, to give an unequivocal instruction to drain that pool, to eliminate it completely. The Christian God—the Christian formulation of God here, supposedly—does exactly the opposite. According to Christians, He is an upgrade, a new covenant of course, and He always tries to find the good in every person as such. The Jewish God also tries, but sometimes He doesn’t find it. Then what? And if He doesn’t find it, then that’s what needs to be done. And again, notice: this isn’t good and evil, this is threat. Good and evil is the rod as a sanction, as punishment. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the rod as prevention, and that’s not the same thing. Okay. What about cases of revenge? There are a number of such cases in the Torah, and there are also, you know, calls for revenge in Jewish culture today in this context. Does the God we’re talking about demand revenge, and if so, doesn’t that contradict the idea of absolute good? Look, that’s a very general statement, and the Jewish doctrine of revenge is not something I think anyone really knows how to define, because there are conflicting sources, and it’s hard to build a coherent picture here—or at least several coherent pictures can be suggested, and they will lead in different directions. I’ll tell you what I think, not what Judaism says. In my view there is room for revenge in two cases. One case is where revenge achieves a preventive result. That is, sometimes revenge itself achieves—yes—punishment in legal theory, one of the goals of punishment is basically preventive revenge. Meaning, revenge whose purpose is to deter him or others from repeating such a crime. Okay? That is certainly a sufficient reason; it’s one of the accepted reasons for punishment in the world of law generally. Elsewhere I also accept the concept of revenge against an evil person in order to take revenge on him. Yes—meaning one must express one’s attitude toward evil also through revenge. But one, it has to be proportionate, and two, only really against the one who deserves that revenge. Revenge in the sense of hurting other people because, I don’t know, his cousin threatened me—that has no place. The case you mentioned earlier, the statement about dropping an atomic bomb that was said in the Knesset, was interpreted as revenge among—It has nothing to do with revenge at all, and that’s a mistake. It wasn’t—I don’t think that was the correct interpretation even of the speaker, who is not my cup of tea. But it wasn’t the correct interpretation. I claim that interpretation came from the gut. If you listened—you may disagree—but he was basically arguing there is no other solution to this problem except… And he didn’t even say to drop an atomic bomb; he said if necessary, then to drop an atomic bomb. I listened—I went back to hear what he said—and that’s exactly what I’m claiming. I’m saying I stand behind him one hundred percent. If necessary. Now we can argue when it’s necessary and whether it’s necessary, and on that there are different opinions. But I don’t think we’ve reached a point where that has to be done. But if necessary, I do accept the claim—not just accept, I agree with the claim—that that is what has to be done, and that’s what morality demands, and that’s what logic demands. And I think people’s automatic revolt against something like that, their unwillingness to consider the claim and say okay, wait, preventively yes, punitively no—meaning to start making these distinctions—people aren’t willing to make those distinctions. People are saturated with emotions that don’t let them think about this issue in a measured way. And that’s part of the same problem I spoke about earlier. And I’m saying: you can argue with him, but make arguments. Say why he isn’t right. Say why in your opinion it’s not correct. I don’t know—make arguments. But I don’t know how to discuss this with someone who is shocked by what I say. So he’s shocked—so what am I supposed to do with that? Meaning, if you think I’m wrong, make arguments and let’s discuss besides the fact that I’m wrong. Speak, and we’ll hear. Fair enough. Okay, so let’s go to somewhat more optimistic places, with a less gloomy tone. Since we touched, even briefly, on the whole mechanism of evolution and the laws that dictate nature and the existence of God, I want to understand a bit more both what you think and what the Judaism you believe in says in that context. Really, out of ignorance. What do you think is basically the purpose of a human being in terms of lifespan? Is there something beyond the life we live? That’s a hard question. In Jewish tradition it is accepted that there is survival of the soul, the World to Come, things of that sort. I’ve written and said more than once that I’m not entirely sure what the source of that belief is and whether it really has a source. Very often beliefs somehow enter from various sources into the tradition, and in a traditional society they are often absorbed and become part of it. As an anecdote, I was once at some vacation place and there was an older Druze or Muslim man sitting next to me—I don’t remember which one, because I had two such conversations, so I don’t remember in which case it was. And he said to me—we were talking about murder over family honor. Blood revenge, honor killing, and so on. He said to me, look, this has no sources in Islam; it’s not Muslim, it’s not… Now I knew that kind of thing from the Jewish side. I said, okay, fine, you’re being apologetic toward outsiders. The fact is that they do it. And the same among Jews—no, the Torah’s ways are ways of pleasantness and the height of morality and all that—it’s not true. But it’s convenient for us to present that face, because you can present selective quotations in whatever direction you’re looking for. There’s no problem. The corpus is large enough that you’ll find quotations for wherever you want. But then when I spoke with him—and what was nice there was that it wasn’t just a declaration, we sat and talked for a long time—he said to me, look, this is an Arab custom from the Arabian deserts that somehow entered Muslim society and was assimilated there and became part of what people see as religion, because as far as they’re concerned, the whole tradition and everything people do is what ought to be done. They don’t distinguish between things that are religious commandments and things that entered as part of the surrounding culture. And then after he said that, suddenly it made sense to me and I said wow, maybe he’s right. I don’t know their sources, but it could very well be true. And then I started thinking further and said, wait, we have things like that too. So many beliefs enter—some of which I listed in my books and articles—so many beliefs that are irrational, that have no basis. I’m not talking about that right now; I’m just bringing an example of truly nonsensical things, with no source, no logic, no anything, and people swear by them as if they came down from Sinai, and anyone who denies them is denying the whole Torah. And it’s obvious that it’s the same process. It’s something people developed one way or another, it entered our tradition, and now go distinguish whether this is actually a Torah-level commandment, a rabbinic one, I don’t know what, or just some custom or invention of one person or another that you may agree with or not agree with, but it certainly is not binding as part of commitment to the Torah or to the divine command. Wow, fascinating. Now I’m saying this generally. With regard to resurrection of the dead—I’m in tension about that statement—or survival of the soul; let’s leave resurrection aside, that’s another topic. Survival of the soul. So I’m somewhat conflicted about that belief. Why? Because logically it actually sounds right to me—logically, not because of tradition. Why? Because I’m a dualist, and I understand that in a human being there is also a component that is not bodily. And when I ask myself what happens to that component when the body dies, when the person dies—then death, for me, is not the evaporation of the person, so to speak, aside from the molecules that remain of course for some time, or the cells. Rather it is a disconnection between body and soul. The hyphen dissolves, meaning the connection between body and soul dissolves, and then the body gradually decays because there’s nothing to animate it. But what happens to the other side of the equation? To the soul, the spirit—what happens to it? My logic says—just logic, a conjecture, I don’t know, I’m not certain about anything—but it seems very plausible to me that this thing survives in some form, and I don’t know what happens to it afterward. You can start talking to me about reincarnations and all kinds of mysticism that doesn’t really speak to me, but in that sense I do understand the logic behind it if you’re already a dualist. And if one is a dualist, then the conclusion that when the body decays there is something else that was there, and where did it go—that is, in some sense it ought to still exist somewhere—it remains. So in that sense, the argument does make sense to me. On the other hand, I don’t really accept the source, the sources people bring. The sources people bring are dubious. In general I don’t learn many things from the Bible. You can get whatever you want out of the Bible, so I don’t deal in Bible, I don’t study Bible, it doesn’t interest me. But the sources people bring for this belief are very dubious sources, and there’s some feeling that it’s sort of ad hoc. Meaning, now here the interesting point is that the belief itself actually is logical—unlike honor killing or strange beliefs of one kind or another that get imported, and then I say it has no source and no logic, so why accept it? Here there is some logic. It’s just that the source is uncertain. And from the standpoint of the logic itself, maybe I’m right and maybe I’m not—you know, with logic I can be wrong or right. So I have a very ambivalent attitude toward this belief in survival of the soul. I tend to think there’s something to it. I don’t think I’m forced to think so as information I received from the Holy One, blessed be He, that this is what happens—and that’s where I stand. That’s what I know how to say about it. So you’re basically saying that you see logic in it; there’s logic that allows—You know, the more logic there is in it, the more that actually raises suspicion that it didn’t come from the tradition but entered because it made sense, so people adopted it precisely because it made sense, and after they adopted it, suddenly it became part of the tradition we received from Sinai. So precisely the fact that it makes sense raises even more suspicion that this story is actually a later invention because of that logic. And then that means I cast some doubt on it, because my logic—you know—my logic may be right or may not. Right, but I just want to understand the logic even more deeply, because the logical explanation you gave was dualism—you simply say you accept that as reality, and then therefore what happens to the soul. Okay, and I’d also be glad if you explained it more, even though I… What is it that seems so logical to you about the soul surviving after death? No, you have to start with dualism itself. First of all, I present a dualistic view of the human being, meaning in a living human being, not a dead one. In a living human being, in my view, there are two substances or two aspects, two dimensions: the material aspect and the spiritual aspect. Okay? Now that’s my starting point. We can discuss why I think that, but that’s the starting point. And once that is your starting point, I say it is very natural to say that matter indeed perishes and what happens to it is what we know happens to it. But what happens to the other substance? I don’t know; we don’t see it. So you’re saying I don’t know—you’re simply saying I don’t know. Yes, exactly. So maybe it remains in one form or another, but certainly all the details people talk about—what happens in the World to Come and paradise and so on—those are all inventions that I don’t have an ounce of trust in. But the idea that something remains here sounds very plausible to me. Now we can start arguing or discussing why I’m a dualist, meaning why be a dualist, but if that’s the starting point then it seems to me this conclusion is pretty unavoidable. Is the explanation for dualism only about human beings? Meaning, is that really what distinguishes us from animals as well? I’m not sure. No, not sure. No. So animals too might persist in some way, and you know what, maybe even plants. That doesn’t mean they have consciousness, and it doesn’t mean—but they have some component that isn’t like inanimate matter. That my eyes do see. Vitalism today is a dirty word among biologists, yes, in the life sciences. So I’m not talking about vitalism. Vitalism is a scientific thesis. Vitalism says that in order to understand biology, you need to assume that living matter is built differently from inanimate matter. I’m not making that assumption. Meaning, I say biologists should do what they do; I don’t know how to do biology better than they do. That’s perfectly fine. So vitalism as a methodological assumption, I agree, is not a good assumption and is unnecessary, even harmful. Because the moment you assume vitalism, then you don’t investigate matter properly, because you always assume there’s something else. And therefore science advanced precisely because people assumed—let’s say—that vitalism is not correct. I’m not making a claim, I’m not speaking about biology. I’m speaking about the question of what there is in us beyond biology. Explain all the brain processes to me—I don’t need vital matter, physics and chemistry are enough. Okay? But the question of what the relation is between brain processes and mental processes, meaning what goes on for us in the mental realm—that’s another question. That has nothing to do with biology and vitalism; it’s a question of dualism. Completely. Okay, what about free choice? So let’s start with whether we have free choice. What do you think? I definitely think we do. I wrote a book about it. I definitely think so, and the main basis—maybe even the only basis—for that is the immediate feeling that I simply choose freely. Like if you ask me why I think there’s a lamp here. Because I see it. Maybe your eyes are deceiving you? Maybe—but as long as you don’t bring me good evidence for that, I assume there’s a lamp here. Okay. But there is pretty good evidence in current science that there is no free choice. There is—if I’m not mistaken—yes, Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli Nobel Prize winner, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, who really describes how you think you’re performing actions but in fact some other mechanism causes you to perform them, meaning that if I now lift the cup, I thought I was the one deciding, but in fact something caused me to do it in a completely different way. Meaning there are all kinds of theses showing that we don’t really have free choice. I also thought this undermined the existence of God as we currently understand Him, but maybe we’ll leave that aside for the moment. Look, studies that show there’s no free choice—there aren’t any. Meaning, they don’t exist. What do you mean? What I just said isn’t one? They don’t exist. There are studies that people claim show we have no free choice, like Libet experiments and their continuations—they’re wrong. There isn’t today—and that relates to the book I mentioned earlier, The Science of Freedom—that book is devoted to precisely this point: first, to show what free choice means, because many people don’t understand the concept of free choice, and the problem begins there. And after you understand the concept of free choice, you understand that none of the scientific experiments, none of the scientific findings, can really decide that question—at least as of today. What will be in the future—who knows. Okay, so let’s just go by what I understand free choice to be. The book I described pretty much denies it. Basically it shows that we have two parts in the brain, emotional and rational, and the rational part thinks it performs various actions, but in fact it doesn’t perform them; rather, our motivations are emotional almost absolutely, if I’m not mistaken entirely absolutely. A few things need to be said here. First, we have experiments showing we also have optical illusions. Today, in current neuroscience, I can induce in you the illusion that you see a lamp when there is no lamp in front of you at all, or that you see your grandmother even though she isn’t standing in front of you, and all sorts of things of that kind. Do you lose trust in your eyes because of that? No. Why? Maybe what you are seeing is also an illusion. Because the fact that there are situations in which you are deceived does not automatically mean that in all of life you should assume everything is an illusion. True, the senses sometimes deceive us, our perceptions sometimes deceive us. That doesn’t mean we give them up. It means one should respect them but also suspect them—meaning, we need to see where yes and where no, and not relate to them as something that is self-evidently one hundred percent reliable. Excellent—have a little humility. Okay, so that’s already something, no? Right, a little humility is definitely always a good thing. But when you’re a determinist, when you say there is no free choice, you are saying there are no free choices. Not—you’re not saying not all choices are free. Because nobody denies that not all choices are free. I don’t know a single sober libertarian—that is, someone who believes in free choice—who denies the fact that very often human beings don’t choose freely. What is an irresistible impulse that exempts you from criminal responsibility in court? Libertarians agree with that too—that when you have an irresistible impulse, you’re exempt from criminal responsibility. Why? Because they also agree that not everything is under your choice. The dispute is not over whether everything is up to our choice. The dispute is whether there are some things that are up to our choice. The determinist claims there aren’t. Now once he claims there aren’t, that’s a very far-reaching statement, because it means that when you bring some examples, you have to generalize and say: and now I claim that all cases are like the examples I brought. And that’s exactly like taking an example of a mirage and saying okay, then every example where you see something is an illusion. Because there is a mirage, and it’s true that there is a mirage. Your claim is not that we always have free choice? Of course not. Who claims such a thing? That’s usually a straw man that determinists enjoy attacking. They say, look, I’ll show you there’s no free choice, because in this case there isn’t and in that case there isn’t. Who thinks that in every case there is free choice? I don’t know anyone who thinks that. And is this connected at all to the existence of God or to the commandments we are commanded to do? In my view the connection is the opposite. First of all, I think there is free choice because that’s what my judgment tells me. After I reach that conclusion, and I also think there is God, then I say okay, so why did He give me free choice? I can try to raise hypotheses or infer conclusions from that, but the two things each stand on their own. I don’t make one depend on the other—not God on free choice and not free choice on God. But many times atheists who represent religion do give this choice as a kind of God of the gaps. Meaning, they say: we have free choice, there’s no scientific explanation for it, because free choice is something you can’t explain scientifically because there is no cause. That’s the whole idea of freedom of the will. So that means there is God because there is something we don’t understand. That’s God of the gaps. I don’t play that game. I don’t play that game. Got it. The promised land, and its importance in our culture and in the faith of Jews—and for you specifically—and whether you have rational explanations for this place and for the importance of our being here? First, this does not occupy a central place in my worldview. Settling the Land of Israel is probably a commandment. There’s some discussion about this in Maimonides’ view and so on, but it’s probably a commandment. Okay, there are many commandments. I do not see any basis for placing the Land of Israel—or certainly the State of Israel, but even the Land of Israel—as some central article of faith, some infrastructure on which religious faith rests. In my view, that was a choice made by people who got very enthusiastic about the Zionist idea, and religious people who got enthusiastic about the Zionist idea, and suddenly turned it into the whole story. I don’t know—throughout history, with all the longing for the Land of Israel that we always say existed, and it did exist, it did—but it didn’t occupy a central place in the worldview even of sages, certainly not of ordinary people. It started from the point when secular Zionism initiated the move, and religious people suddenly found that it fit them well with this idea, and then they bring some Nachmanides who writes that the entire Torah outside the Land is only “set yourself markers,” some remembrance of the Torah. The real Torah is only in the Land of Israel. He writes that in some commentary on the Torah, and people write a million things in Torah commentaries. Nobody takes such a thing, which appears incidentally in some Torah commentary, and turns it into some article of faith. Torah commentators wrote many things. Again, I’m not belittling it. I’m only talking about the proportions that this thing received. In my view those are tendentious proportions. There’s no real basis for it. There is probably a commandment to settle the Land of Israel. There are many commandments. That’s all. Wow, it’s fascinating how you think about it. Now, it is true that I do see this as some basis for our claim to the land, although it is not central to my religious life. But I do think there is such a promise, and I do think that gives us some right to this place, relative to what we discussed earlier, where I said I don’t need that right in order to deal with Palestinians and to do all the terrible things I spoke about earlier—or hypothetically at least. I do think that although I don’t need it, it actually is true. Meaning, we do also have a right here. Not only are we allowed to be here, we also have a right to this place, and in that sense I do have some motivation to be here. But I’d be lying if I told you that if the State of Israel had been established in Uganda or Zimbabwe, I wouldn’t have gone there. My interest in living with Jews is much greater than my interest in living in the Land of Israel. There was a survey of journalists, I think in the 1950s, where they interviewed various intellectuals in Israel and asked them, why are you a Zionist? They got to Yeshayahu Leibowitz, one of my favorite Jews, and asked him, why are you a Zionist? And he said: “Because we’re fed up with the goyim.” That’s all. I’m also a Zionist because of that, mainly because of that. To live together with Jews is to live with Jews. I don’t want to live under another rule and I don’t want to be dependent on anybody’s goodwill, exactly like a Belgian wants to live in Belgium. Nothing religious. My Zionism is secular Zionism. There’s a joke in Bnei Brak about the Rabbi of Ponevezh, who was the head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva, who established it, one of the leaders of Haredi Judaism. On Independence Day he did not omit the supplication prayer, and he did not say Hallel. Now for those who don’t know, I’ll explain a little: people omit the supplication prayer on festive days, meaning it’s a sign of festivity, because the supplication prayer is sadness, a kind of bowedness. On festive days you don’t say it. You don’t supplicate. Right, but Hallel is also a sign of festivity, okay? On festive days people say Hallel. Now Religious Zionists say Hallel on Independence Day because it’s festive, and they omit the supplication prayer. Haredim don’t say Hallel because it’s not festive in their eyes, and they do say the supplication prayer because it’s just another ordinary day. The Rabbi of Ponevezh neither said Hallel nor the supplication prayer—which puts him in neither camp. So his students asked him, tell us, which is it? If you’re a Zionist, then say Hallel; if you’re Haredi, then say the supplication prayer. How can you do both? So he said, I’m a Zionist like Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion on Independence Day did not say Hallel and did not say the supplication prayer, because of course he didn’t pray at all. Therefore I too on Independence Day don’t say Hallel and don’t say the supplication prayer. Now in Bnei Brak they tell this as a clever joke at the expense of the Religious Zionists. They don’t understand it’s actually a joke at their expense. Because I think the Rabbi of Ponevezh said it completely seriously, if I’m allowed to speculate—I never asked him, I never met him. But I think he said it completely seriously. And that is exactly my Zionism and that of Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Why am I a Zionist? Because I want to live here. That does not come from the religious dimension of my worldview. It comes from—I’m a Zionist like you. Like Ben-Gurion. So I won’t say Hallel and I won’t say the supplication prayer. I do say Hallel, because I don’t think it depends on the religious dimension, but on the conceptual level I neither say Hallel nor the supplication prayer. Why? Because it’s a happy day for me. It makes me happy not because there’s a commandment, holiness, I don’t know what, the messiah is coming—I have no idea when he’ll come or whether he’ll come. But I want to live with the Jewish people, I want to live here, I want to end the exile of two thousand years, that crazy mutation we experienced for two thousand years, and that’s all. And I’m very happy that it happened. You don’t need to be religious for that, and there is no difference between my Zionism and your Zionism in that sense. So I will just—let’s say—for the sake of those who would say this is a view that mocks Religious Zionism, here too I hear some contradiction in you. Religious Zionism uses religion. Obviously. I’m not with them on that. You’re not with them? No. I’m neither with the Haredim nor with the Religious Zionists. I once defined it by saying that I am a religious Jew and a secular Zionist. The Religious Zionists—their Zionism is religious and their religiosity is Zionist. Right. The Haredim are religious and not Zionist. Now I am Zionist and I am religious, but there is no hyphen between them. Yes, it’s not connected. There is no hyphen. Meaning, my Zionism is not religious. My Zionism is like yours and Ben-Gurion’s. Do you think they have a logical flaw to that extent or not? No, no. Because from what I understand from you, there isn’t such a totally clear-cut command in a very—No, there is. There is a commandment to settle the Land of Israel. But there are many commandments. I don’t found my identity and my life on the prohibition against speaking slander. Why not? Because I don’t. If you ask me whether it’s forbidden to speak slander—yes, but that’s not what defines my identity. It is forbidden to speak slander; I try not to speak it, but that’s not what defines my identity. There is a commandment to settle the Land of Israel. All true. But with all due respect, I would have lived in Zimbabwe too if the Jewish people lived in Zimbabwe. That’s not the point. That’s not what defines me. As far as I’m concerned, I’m here because my people are here, not because there’s some heritage from the Bible and all kinds of things like that. I’m not asking about your identity and what defines you. I’m trying to understand the— I’d be here even if I were like you; I’m not here because of my religiosity. My religiosity also tells me that I thereby also fulfill the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. Okay, but that by the way doesn’t refer to the State of Israel; it refers to the Land of Israel. But the God you believe in is a God who gave us the Land of Israel? Yes. I hope everyone who asked for you to come got their reward, as they say. I hope so too. People really ask for you a lot. Thank you very much, Rabbi. Thank you. A pleasure.