Answer

Hello.
1. It is actually you who are making assumptions about God’s nature, and I don’t know what you are basing them on. What I wrote was that philosophically I reached the conclusion that there is a God, an intelligent entity that created the world, without entering into the nature of that entity or any of its characteristics. Now a tradition reaches me that this entity revealed itself as a personal entity (in a certain sense), and I do not reject that out of hand. I add that it is natural that if there is a God who created the world, He would reveal Himself in order to say what He wants from us. This is not an argument in favor of revelation if it had not occurred. But once a tradition about this reaches me, that argument explains it quite well.
By contrast, you claim that since God is not an intelligent entity but some kind of object (where does that come from?), and on the basis of that unsupported assumption, which may perhaps be true, you decide to reject the tradition. That seems to me a strange claim. If there is a possibility that my philosophical conclusion fits the tradition, why adopt specifically an interpretation that stands in opposition to it? By way of analogy: someone comes to you and tells you that he spoke with Jacob. You, who do not know Jacob, tell me that there is no Jacob at all, because Jacob is a stone that cannot speak, and this person (whom you also do not know) invented everything.
2. I am not familiar with any other reliable tradition of mass divine revelation. Certainly not one that can be fitted to the God we are speaking about.
3. Where does your confidence that it is not come from? Again you are making assumptions and attacking by their power. I claim that if God revealed Himself and told us something, then apparently that is what He wants from us. And you argue against this that maybe He is tricking us or is just confused. Maybe—but why assume that? That seems a strange claim to me. Again and again you are reversing things. You are saying, “and one may object with some strain,” while I am saying, at most, “and one may resolve with some strain.” A hypothesis is good in order to explain, but not in order to attack or undermine.
The Sadducees claimed there is no Oral Torah, and the Pharisees claimed there is. What was accepted is the tradition that there is, and that is the best I have. Maybe I am mistaken, but I have no way of knowing that, and I can only do my best. I assume that God cannot demand of me things I am incapable of doing (namely, to know what He really wants better than the tradition that reached me and was accepted).
4. These are very weak claims in my opinion. First, I do not think that only priests made decisions in biblical times. The Hebrew Bible does not describe halakhic rulings in detail at all. It describes spiritual leadership. And in that leadership there were not only priests (there were also prophets, judges, and others). Authority to control religious customs is not an explanation for the collection of strange directives that took shape in Jewish law. Jewish law as we know it today took shape in the Second Temple period and afterward, and there there were no priests and no interested parties. The Pharisees who shaped it were people who were not rich at all and had no social standing. Their status was a result of their wisdom. And in general, that the priests should scatter themselves and live off the goodwill of others does not at all seem to me like the conduct of people seeking power.
6. With respect, again and again you are serving as God’s psychologist, and then accusing everyone else of being His psychologist. I did not base anything on His will. A tradition reached me, and I explain it and fit it to various hypotheses I have. But you receive that same tradition and reject it and declare it false on the basis of other hypotheses that you have. And are you Moses our Teacher’s psychologist, that you know he forged it? A man comes who appears trustworthy to people and tells them that he has a command from God, backed by a mass revelation and accompaniment throughout history. On all this you decide that it does not fit God (based on His psychology) and that Moses our Teacher invented everything, and then you claim that people who hold the tradition are speculative? Amazing!
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Questioner:
Hello Rabbi, and thank you for the answer.
 
I will continue to ask and challenge for the sake of clarifying the truth as much as possible.
 
A. Why, philosophically, is God intelligent? One could say He is intelligent but in a completely different way from human intelligence. So one cannot project from human psychological laws to those of God, even if both possess intelligence.
 
B. Where does the assumption come from that “it is natural that if there is a God who created the world, He would reveal Himself in order to tell us what He wants from us”? A linguistic analysis of your words says that God has a nature. Who imposed that nature on God? Even the example with Jacob—“someone comes to you and tells you he spoke with Jacob. You, who do not know Jacob, will tell me that there is no Jacob at all, because Jacob is a stone that cannot speak, and that person (whom you also do not know) invented everything”—assumes that I recognize the existence of human beings with a certain nature. By contrast, I have never known God’s nature at all. (But perhaps this is just wordplay and you did not mean it.)
 
C. Why, for example, did God not reveal Himself to an ant to tell it what He wants from it? At least give it intelligence so it can investigate this on its own? Or to a monkey? Or to stones? Is it really God’s nature to tell His creatures what He wants from them?
 
D. “What was accepted is the tradition that there is, and that is the best I have” (the Oral Torah). That is what was accepted among the people. So what? Why is that the best I have? Maybe the best I have is to observe only what is clear according to both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and the rest is “you shall not add to it and you shall not subtract from it.” And besides that, to keep the spirit of the Torah. Maybe that is the best thing rationally speaking? Or to fulfill the commandments in such a way as to satisfy both the Sadducees and the Pharisees together? Like tying fringes to garments, wearing tefillin all day, going with blue-dyed tzitzit, and so on? Why is ignoring the Sadducees and following the Pharisees the best there is? Isn’t that just what is socially convenient? (By the way, in high school that is more or less what I did, and people thought I was crazy. It is difficult, but is that not the best thing “for” God?)
 
E. You wrote: “And are you Moses our Teacher’s psychologist, that you know he forged it? A man comes who appears trustworthy to people and tells them that he has a command from God, backed by a mass revelation and accompaniment throughout history. On all this you decide that it does not fit God (based on His psychology) and that Moses our Teacher invented everything, and then you claim that people who hold the tradition are speculative? Amazing!”
1. Zarathustra also sounds very trustworthy. Many New Age figures today also sound very trustworthy. In the religions of the East as well there were many founders of idolatrous religions who were trustworthy.
2. The accompaniment throughout history—I agree that the history of the people of Israel is a strange phenomenon that apparently cannot be explained physically-psychologically-sociologically. Apparently some kind of spiritual explanation is required.
But from here to jump to the claim that God wants us to observe 613 commandments? That is a non-rational leap. What is the proof of that? What is the connection between this history and the prohibition of shaatnez? What is the connection between it and “Love your neighbor as yourself”?
If I cannot explain certain physical phenomena that require us to “change” the laws of physics, and then the scientist who discovered those phenomena comes and says that God caused them to appear as a miracle and He demands that we love one another or else gravity will collapse—should we believe him? Fine, there were “future-seeing” prophets. I’m willing to accept that. But from there to the commandments—the road is long.
 
With thanks and blessings,
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Rabbi:
Five notebooks have now gone up on my site in which I explain these things in greater detail. It may be worthwhile for you to look at the fifth notebook there. Even there it is written relatively briefly and does not address every detail, but here it is certainly hard to do the subject justice.
 
A. When one sees a complex entity, the accepted assumption is that it was made by an intelligent agent. The matter is explained in detail in my notebooks. There is no such thing as intelligence in a human sense and intelligence in a non-human sense. I did not get into the character of His intelligence. I do not know whether you read the notebooks, but I explain it there.
 
B. The term “natural” is just a manner of speaking. Perhaps it would be more accurate to write “called for.” If God wants something from us, then it is only to be expected that He would honor us and inform us of it.
 
C. Because He wants nothing from it. And the reason is that an ant has no free choice, so what would be gained by informing it of His will if in any case it does what its nature causes it to do. The imprinting of its nature is the divine command to the ant.
 
D. As stated, in my estimation I have no better way to assess what God wants. Assuming He gave a Torah, He had to take into account that we would act according to how we interpret it. Regarding the Sadducees, I already wrote to you that they assume there was no Oral Torah, and therefore they interpret on their own. That does not sound plausible to me.
 
E.
1. If all these people sound trustworthy to you, then listen to them. They do not sound trustworthy to me, incidentally quite apart from belief in the Jewish God (I simply have no trust in New Age).
2. I did not jump. I brought this as an additional supporting argument that joins the others. You present it as though I said that Jewish history is a sufficient reason for religious obligation. It has no connection to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This argument is brought in order to show that there is something unique here, and that joins the claims about revelation, receiving the Torah, and a special role. “Love your neighbor as yourself” I learn from the Torah that was given, not from our history. This is a caricature of my words.
If some scientist were to show anomalies indicating profound understanding, and this joined other indications, I would certainly take his words seriously.
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Questioner:
The central section is section C. The rest are secondary and follow from it. Experience too shows that God does not reveal Himself to every object in the world to tell it its purpose, and the assumption that God is supposed to inform us of purpose, and that He assigned some purpose at all, and that He thinks in terms of purpose—this is not an assumption proven or even hinted at by the world. Even according to the teleological proof there is a tendency in the creation of the world (and I am not arguing over the question whether there are supernatural forces that intervened in evolution or in the history of the people of Israel), but there is no command, no “meaning,” no “intention.” A robot too has a goal, but not an intention, and it cannot issue a command. The assumption that God assigned man a purpose is baseless and should be cut away with Occam’s razor. The claim that He reveals the purpose is an additional unproven claim and does not withstand the theological-rational-comparative question: why does God not reveal Himself to every object in the world that He created, and how is man different? Seemingly it makes no sense that if God wants to reveal to His creatures their purpose, He would reveal it only to the Jewish people or to human beings.
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Rabbi:
A robot has no intention, and therefore indeed has no judgment and cannot do anything. A robot is not a cause of anything in the world, since everything it does is only because there is an intelligent creature that created it (the programmer-engineer). The engineer is the one who created the things the robot produces. The example you brought in order to refute is itself excellent proof for my words: without an intelligent entity at the beginning, complex things do not come into being. This is essentially the second law of thermodynamics.
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Questioner:
Thank you for the answers. You are enlightening me.
Interesting—how do you define free choice? Is it randomness as opposed to determinism? In both cases, apparently revelation would change nothing according to your view. Because if we are deterministic, we are like the ant, and if we are random, then our response to revelation would also be random.
I would say that specifically if we are deterministic, we can change following revelation through cause-and-effect links. Revelation would be a cause for behavioral change, just as thought changes behavior. But then we return to the question: why didn’t God reveal Himself to ants?
Thanks again,
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Rabbi:
I devoted an entire book to free choice (its Hebrew title is Sciences of Freedom). There I defined all these concepts well. These are rather subtle issues and it is hard to get into them here. For example, choice is not randomness, and of course not determinism either. There I explain in detail.
I already explained that He did reveal Himself to them. He imprinted in them what He wants them to do. There is no point in commanding them if they have no ability to control what they do. Is there any point in commanding a stone?
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Questioner:
I’ll try to obtain the book, God willing.
 
Regarding the Sadducees—
 
You wrote: “As stated, in my estimation I have no better way to assess what God wants. Assuming He gave a Torah, He had to take into account that we would act according to how we interpret it. Regarding the Sadducees, I already wrote to you that they assume there was no Oral Torah, and therefore they interpret on their own. That does not sound plausible to me.”
 
It seems they had an Oral Torah of their own, only one closer to the Written Torah than that of the Pharisees. If you do what you interpret—then why limit yourself to the interpretations of the Sages? (And if “He had to take into account that we would do with it what we interpret from it,” then perhaps interpret with your own reason like the Karaites, who are neither Pharisees nor Sadducees.) Why shouldn’t we try to reconstruct remnants of the Sadducees’ interpretation, which they claim they received by tradition—a tradition attached to the text? For example, it is known that all the Sadducees did not fight on the Sabbath even to the point of self-sacrifice. If it were open to every person to interpret as he sees fit, there would not have been uniformity. As mentioned: tefillin all day, fringes on garments, fringes with tekhelet, and so on—and let us try to build a Torah that satisfies both the Pharisees and the Sadducees together. On the contrary, if I understand correctly, most secular scholarship claims that the Sadducees preceded the Pharisees, and the main claim is that they were the continuation of the priesthood, the transmitters of the Torah, while the Pharisees were an innovation and a reform.
 
Thanks,
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Rabbi:
If they had an Oral Torah of their own, then we return to the question why one should act according to the positions accepted as Jewish law. And here I return and say that my assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself understands that we will do according to what we understand, and Jewish law is the mechanism that determines what we (as a collective) understand. The Sadducean approach was rejected from Jewish law, and it no longer exists today. So as far as I am concerned, the collective decided in another direction.
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Questioner:
Okay. I agree, and I need to think about it further. In any case, it seems to me, to the best of my understanding (though it still requires further thought), that the Sadducees’ Oral Torah is in the category of a law given to Moses at Sinai, and not something that can change over time. Part of the Karaite Oral Torah, for example, claims to have a “burden of inheritance,” that is, a tradition from Moses our Teacher.
In any case, I do not understand why you assume the method of collective change (represented in Rabbi Kook’s The Precious Adar) is valid for “bridging” between Sadducean and Pharisaic Jewish law. Maybe according to the Sadducees the collective does not decide? Even among the Sages this method is mentioned only very late, by Rabbi Kook.
And by the way, if your whole argument about the Oral Torah is because the Holy One, blessed be He, had to take into account that we would interpret the Torah according to our own understanding, then why not simply be Karaites? And if you are worried that we will be unable to interpret because of the multiplicity of interpretations, then commit yourself to a law given to Moses at Sinai that regulates the interpretations (including a law given to Moses at Sinai that one must listen to the sages), and that strengthens what I wrote: that the root of the sects of the Second Temple period was law given to Moses at Sinai, not ordinary human interpretation.
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Rabbi:
That law given to Moses at Sinai did not reach me. Do you think I am supposed to decide on my own that there was such a law given to Moses at Sinai and then act accordingly? That seems strange to me. When a tradition reaches me that attributes some law to Sinai, I adopt that as a working assumption. But I do not invent that certain extinct approaches were laws given to Moses at Sinai and now act according to them. By the same logic, I could decide about every creature that ever lived and said something that it expresses some law given to Moses at Sinai and I must act accordingly.
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Questioner:
Regarding the question whether God—the intelligence that created the world—also revealed Himself: I’ll begin by studying your book Sciences of Freedom, God willing.
 
Meanwhile—
 
I hold by a human morality.
(Utilitarianism. In short—from my experience of pleasure and suffering I experience the value in pleasure and the “negative value” in suffering, and from pleasure and suffering I experience that one ought to increase pleasure and reduce suffering in the world. But I’m not arguing about that right now, because there are a thousand and one systems of human morality.)
 
Let us assume God assigned me a purpose and revealed it to me in the Jewish-Orthodox tradition.
 
Why should I take the purpose into account? What moral value does it have? If my mother gave birth to me so that I would be a murderer, is it moral that I be a murderer?
 
If God had emotions, I would see a reason to listen to Him so that He would feel good. But we are talking about intelligence with no connection to emotion.
 
And furthermore, a God who reveals man’s purpose—there is no reason He should speak about reward and punishment. After all, we are talking about an appeal to free choice. It looks like an appeal to the deterministic component of man that reacts in fear to a threat. So there is also a question about the Torah as the revelation of man’s purpose, and an opening to the question: is the Torah the revelation of purpose, or the deterministic programming of the human mind? (And again we return to the question of the ant, or perhaps we should ask why God does not reveal Himself to a lion and frighten it emotionally so that it should not prey, because that is immoral—but to man He does. Is it God’s nature to reveal Himself as He revealed Himself to man?)
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Rabbi:
In my book Sciences of Freedom I do not deal with God’s nature and revelation, but with free choice.
Quite apart from belief in God, I disagree with you regarding the identification of morality with utilitarianism. See in my book Sciences of Freedom the discussion of Kant’s categorical imperative.
 
As for the question why one should take purpose into account: indeed, it is an important question, and I will try to illustrate why it nevertheless does not seem important to me. Take for example a person who asks you the following question: I know that murder is evil, but still—why not do what is evil? The answer is that the meaning of the concept “evil” is that it must not be done. If you ask that question, it seems that you have not really understood that the act is evil, or you have not understood at all what the concept of evil is. If someone has no moral intuition at all (not merely that he disagrees with you on certain moral questions), you will never be able to explain to him why one should be obligated to morality. Obligation to morality is something that should be self-evident to one who understands it and possesses it. One who does not (assuming such a person exists) is blind to it, and you will never be able to explain it to him. People lacking moral feeling (for example due to damage to the amygdala, or loss of the capacity for empathy) are usually regarded as a kind of sick person. By the same token, one who does not understand that the purpose imposed on us by God is binding probably does not understand the concept of God or of purpose, or does not possess this religious intuition. To such a person I cannot explain these things. But my feeling is that, as with morality, so too here: many people do understand all this, but intellectually they ask themselves, “But why fulfill what I feel?” and when they do not find an answer, they abandon that obligation. And what I explain to them is that the fact that they did not find an answer is because no answer is needed. If it is clear to you that it is so, then it is so. It is a basic principle, and there is no need to seek answers for it outside itself. Just as I cannot explain to someone blind from birth why I trust my sense of sight, and yet his difficulties will not arouse doubt in me or undermine that trust.
God did not create us for morality in an arbitrary way (as in the example where someone’s mother created him so that he would be a murderer). He conveyed to us that this is what is right for us and for the world. This is not an arbitrary decision but relevant information. (After all, you yourself wrote that you accept that the halakhic path is correct, and our discussion is only about the contractual obligation toward it.) Therefore there is an obligation to do it, unlike the purpose imposed arbitrarily by the mother. She also does not know everything that God knows, and therefore there is no reason for me to trust her and do everything she imposes on me.
Reward and punishment are like in any educational process. With children too, you want what is good for them, and nevertheless you do not leave everything to their choice, but also use reward and punishment. Fear of a threat is not deterministic, but a weight that is added to deliberation at the time of decision. It is not a negation of free choice. See my aforementioned book.
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Questioner:
A. I accept the idea that one who understands what evil is cannot logically ask why one ought not do what is evil, including the large paragraph you wrote. Perhaps I did not fully grasp your idea of “purpose.”
 
B. You wrote, “God did not create us for morality in an arbitrary way”—are you saying that the purpose is to be moral by criteria that exist even without the purpose, or that the very divine purposiveness is what constitutes morality? (Forgive me for the Euthyphro-style approach…)
 
C. I did not claim that I accept the halakhic path as correct. I am investigating and searching for truth. At present, without pretending that I know everything, I do not feel obligated to Jewish law at all. I said at the outset that I am fairly Reform. I believe that human beings wrote the Torah. Some of them had greater insight, some less, and some also had “supernatural” powers. Theoretically this does not contradict divine validity, nor does it require it, but I have no reason to think the Torah has divine validity. Sometimes in moments of fogginess or clarity I feel that the word of God is heard in my soul through morality or compassion, and sometimes this also fits with the Torah’s directives, but I cannot explain this philosophically at the moment (even to myself). And about this perhaps it was said in the midrash: “The voice of the Lord is in power”—according to the power of my comprehension.
 
D. I agree that it is correct to say that intelligence created the world. But is that intelligence moral? “Who has measured the spirit of the Lord, or what man can make His counsel known to Him?” (Isaiah 40:13). Is there a morality that guides divine intelligence? You proved to me that there is intelligence, because the world is complex. But is that intelligence moral? That has not been proven.
 
E. If I judge God by my human morality, I convict Him immediately. Not because of the Holocaust. Because my ear is itching a little right now and it is unpleasant for me, or because a mosquito bit my brother and it hurts. God created pain and suffering in the world, and that convicts Him according to human morality. He also did not create infinite happiness. That too convicts Him. Or maybe He is not omnipotent? But that is another issue, and I am not sure that is the direction you mean.
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Rabbi:
B. For some reason the word “morality” slipped in by mistake. I meant: “God did not create us for Jewish law in an arbitrary way.” That is, imposing the purpose is not merely arbitrary, but because that is the right thing. Therefore the example of a mother imposing the purpose of being a murderer is not relevant. And this does not depend on the Euthyphro question of whether the good is a result of the divine decision or the reverse.
 
C. You wrote that it is clear to you that this is the right thing. That is a quotation from your words, and that is what I wrote.
 
D. Who claimed that this intelligence is moral? How did that get in here? About that you can read in the fourth notebook, but that is not our discussion here.
 
E. God did not create pain and suffering in the world, nor finite or infinite happiness. But as you wrote, this is a new and different discussion. It is explained in the books I mentioned.
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Questioner:
(I have not read what you wrote in the book about the categorical imperative. In my opinion there is logic in it, but it cannot be implemented by pure reason. The question is: which rule at all am I submitting to reason’s judgment? Perhaps “it is permitted to lie” is not a rule acceptable to reason, but the rule “everyone whose name is so-and-so and who is writing an email right now is permitted to lie”—that is an acceptable rule.)
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Rabbi:
Then read it there. I am not speaking about the content of the imperative, but about its logic. The discussions you raised are old and not important here, and there is no reason to enter into them in our discussion.
 
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Questioner:
You wrote, “That is, imposing the purpose is not merely arbitrary, but because that is the right thing.”
 
As you said—someone who does not know what evil is will not understand why one ought to avoid it. So I am trying to understand your use of the word “right.”
 
Is it because God is the thing on which everything is based, and there is no God apart from His will (“I Myself wrote and gave My soul,” “the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are all one”), so He is the absolute truth, and therefore His will is the absolute truth? I’m not even sure I understood myself. Perhaps because I still do not sufficiently understand the concept of command in the context of free choice.
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Rabbi:
What I meant was that when God commands, people have a clear sense that there is an obligation to obey and that this is the right thing to do. Similar to the moral command: once you understand that this is what it demands of you, you understand that it is also incumbent upon you (there is no room for an additional question: true, it is good, but why do it anyway?). And therefore now, when I deliberate how to act, I choose to do what He commanded.
The term “right” here is that same feeling that accompanies hearing God’s command. If you have such a feeling, then you know it. And if not—then not. It is somewhat similar to obeying one’s parents. We have a sense that this is the right thing to do, and not only because of morality. But because they are not omnipotent and do not know everything, it is clear that we will not accept their words absolutely, and each time we will consider whether to carry them out. Not because the obligation does not exist, but because the content of their commands is not always correct (because they are human beings who can err). That does not apply to Him.
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Questioner:
You remind me of awe of exaltedness and love of God at the beginning of The Path of the Upright (the five parts of service). As if, without understanding how, divine speech arouses in us a whole array of images and colors. Even though God is so distant. Intelligence without emotion. I feel that He is cold. Everything is artificial. As if one could measure God in a physics laboratory. Do you have any idea how to help me emotionally with the rift between these images?
And I also fear that divine authority will conflict with my human morality. I am just now studying Milgram’s experiments in social psychology. Perhaps the understanding that God is a “king” with authority, and like a “parent,” as described in The Path of the Upright mentioned above—before whom we are afraid and ashamed and perhaps also love Him—will in fact trample my human morality. My morality comes from the “phenomenology of pleasure and suffering”: I sense the “phenomenon of what ought to be increased” and the “phenomenon of what ought to be reduced” in pleasure and suffering. Human beings do terrible things when they submit to authority, even when they are sure of their values.
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Rabbi:
I feel that we are repeating ourselves. I’ll try to address your words here, and I suggest that if there is nothing new, we stop here.
 
I brought the moral sense as an example (to which you too are committed, as you keep writing, including here). We are not talking about an image, emotion, or experience, but about an insight—that is, an obligating perception. Just as one who experiences the moral command understands that it obligates him (and does not merely feel or imagine it). It is not merely that he feels like fulfilling it. We are not dealing with emotion or image, but with obligation. After all, regarding morality, someone who does not keep it is someone I judge and condemn; that is, this is not a matter of responding to a desire or some image. It is an obligating claim, and its basis is the insight that accompanies understanding the moral command. When you understand that this is the command, it is clear to you that one must obey it and fulfill it, and someone who does not do so is not okay.
From this I tried to illustrate my relation to the religious command. There too we are not speaking of an image or emotion, but of an insight that accompanies acceptance/understanding of the command. I explained that this insight is that such commands are to be responded to. And it does not matter whether they are warm or alienating, whether I love them or do not love them. Of course, if you do not find this insight within yourself, that is another discussion. But if it exists within you and you merely wonder why it obligates, I tried to explain that you should not fear this. It obligates because it obligates. There is no need for explanations for basic principles. Just as no explanation is needed for why morality obligates and why what the eye sees reflects reality. We simply understand this, and that is that.
Therefore I do not see a need for emotional help. If anything, it is philosophical help that is called for (clarification of insights). To the best of my understanding, many people do experience this insight, but because they feel it is unfounded—that is, some kind of illusion—they abandon religious obligation. To these people I say that the search for an explanation of why this obligates is a mistake, just like the parallel search in the question of why morality obligates or why the eyes do indeed reliably reflect reality. This very common feeling thinks that even though we have such an insight, it is a non-binding illusion unless we have found an explanation for it—meaning, unless we have grounded it in another principle. And on what shall we ground that other principle? In the end we always remain standing on our foundational insights, and by definition we will not have an explanation for them. Does that mean they are arbitrary? Not at all. It means they are self-evident and do not require an explanation that grounds them in other principles outside themselves.
 
First, on the factual level I do not see that faith and religious obligation trample morality. Unfortunately, they do not always improve it, but I do not think religious people are less moral than others (and probably not more moral either. Again, unfortunately).
In any case, if your problem is that religious obligation will trample morality, as you wrote, it seems to me that the conclusion that follows is entirely different. Commit yourself, and when it conflicts with morality and you do not find a justification—if you think morality overrides the religious command, then do not observe it. What is the problem? Why does this fear lead you to abandon religious obligation? By the same logic, if you fear the suppression of morality, then do not be a Zionist (because that too may trample morality), and do not walk around in the street and do not go to work and do not be around people (for you might harm them). All these activities endanger morality exactly like faith does, and perhaps more. Do you think the solution is to shut yourself down from all human activity? I disagree. You should do what seems right to you, and alongside that pay attention to the fact that you nevertheless remain moral. That’s all.
This reminds me that after Rabin’s assassination, many people pointed to the dangers of religious faith. And I was always astonished by that foolishness—not because there is no danger in religious faith. Of course there is. There is danger in every belief. Only someone who believes in nothing (not in God and not in any other value) endangers nothing ideologically. Practically speaking, in my opinion that is the most dangerous type. Those critics are essentially expecting that even though I believe in God and in obligation toward Him, I should stop that because it is dangerous. But if there is a God, then there is; and if not, then not. And if it is dangerous, then one must cope with it and try to prevent the dangers. But to throw away faith because it is dangerous sounds absurd to me. This is of course contrary to pragmatist views: the true is not subordinate to the useful. What is true should be decided by philosophical considerations, and the dangers should be something we try to overcome. The true and the useful are independent of one another.