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Q&A: The Transition from Morality to Revelation

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The Transition from Morality to Revelation

Question

I saw that you explain belief in revelation through two plausible tracks that converge.
One of your points there is the move from the philosophical conclusion that there is a God to the claim that He wants something from us. 
As you say, it is very plausible that He did not create the world for nothing and that He has some purpose. But I did not understand why we should not say that the purpose is the morality embedded within us, and not something beyond that. After all, that seems like the default choice, since it is already built into us.

Answer

I explained it there. Morality is a means of creating a properly ordered society. It cannot be that the purpose of creating society is morality. Just do not create a society, and there will be no need for morality.

Discussion on Answer

Aron (2025-09-16)

Does the Rabbi have any insight into why? What is the will for? If the Rabbi has dealt with this in the past, I would be glad for a reference.
More power to you.

Know What to Answer Yourself (2025-09-16)

Rabbi, do you not think that the whole effort to deal with the “logic of God” is unnecessary? Because personally, that is how it seems to me intuitively.
After we reached the conclusion that God exists and created a world, His very existence strengthens the idea that He indeed revealed Himself, no doubt, but it feels to me that trying to work out what it is sufficiently logical for Him to want and what not is a bit strange.
I am not saying this in order to weaken your argument, because if there is no option to deal with what He wants, then there are no claims for the other side either.
The strongest conclusion is His existence from looking at the world, and after we find that He exists and on the other hand there is a reliable tradition of His revelation, which is only after that that we can know what He wants and what He does not, indeed we have to accept it.

Know What to Answer Yourself (2025-09-16)

Let me sharpen that: yes, in my opinion He does have some purpose, because otherwise it is very hard to understand why create at all. But all the speculations beyond that are, in my view, either unnecessary or in any case fairly weak arguments.

Michi (2025-09-16)

Probably some kind of spiritual purposes. I do not know what they are.

Know,
I did not understand your comment. Indeed, there is not much significance to this. Who said there is? There is no claim here that without understanding there is no obligation to observe. It is just a question of whether it can be understood.

Know What to Answer Yourself (2025-09-17)

I just wanted to understand from you whether you think this move is critical.
As I said, personally it seems speculative to me to try to understand God’s purposes. It is clear to me that there is a purpose, but in my view deciphering it can come only through revelation, and therefore all the speculation about whether morality is enough, etc., seems quite unnecessary to me, because God Himself would not leave us room for doubt about what He wants, especially since He knows that we know He is different from a human being and that it is impossible for us to know what He wants us to do unless He tells us what it is. (I simply skip a certain move of yours there at the beginning of the fifth notebook.)

The somewhat more significant difference here is that I do not rule out any purpose, and in my opinion it does not necessarily have to be some higher need outside the world. That is, even if theoretically revelation had told us that the purpose is only morality, I would not reject revelation because of that.

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