Answer

Hello David. Let me first say that the concepts of “good” and “evil” in your definition b are not unambiguous, but I’ll return to that at the end. First I’ll state what I claim. In my view there are two kinds of values: 1. Moral values. 2. Religious values. Moral values are meant to improve people’s lives and society in the accepted moral sense. Every human being would agree to them, regardless of religion or background, aside from marginal disputes. Religious values are meant for other purposes (I have no idea what they are). You may ask: how do I know they exist at all? Because Jewish law deals only with values of type 2. Therefore there are commandments that are non-moral (such as the prohibition of eating pork or observing the Sabbath), and certainly anti-moral ones (such as saving a gentile’s life on the Sabbath, or the obligation to divorce a priest’s wife who was raped). Regarding these commandments one can say either that they are arbitrary or that they are meant to achieve religious values. For they have not the slightest connection to morality (aside from the nonsensical talk about some exalted divine morality that nobody understands, which is really just another name for religious values).
Now to the ambiguity in your definitions. In your definition b, the world is being made “better.” If that is in the moral sense, then it indeed belongs to morality; if it is in the religious sense, then it does not.
A person can be morally good and religiously bad (which is why I don’t like using the terms good and evil in the religious context). A priest who marries a divorced woman and takes care of her children is religiously negative and morally positive. And if she has no children, then he is religiously negative and morally neutral. All the above talk about exalted divine morality mixes up religious good with moral good because the same term is being used for both. That is why I prefer negative and positive over good and evil, which pertain only to morality.
As for your opening, I’ll only say that in my opinion the two options before you are actually these: either you don’t understand, or you agree. 🙂
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Questioner:
I’m still not sure whether I don’t understand or *don’t* agree..
I want to focus on the values you described as “type 2.” What I understand from what you wrote is that they are “religious” values, which basically equals “x” values, which equals any other obscure word you might want to use, because you have no idea what the reason for establishing them is. In your view, did the Sages—or the halakhic mainstream all the way down to you (but not including you)—also understand the halakhic value system this way?
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Rabbi:
Absolutely. And even if not—it changes nothing. This is a simple halakhic fact.
You can argue only if you can explain to me what moral value is served by the prohibition against eating pork, or observing the Sabbath, or corpse impurity, or sanctifying the priest, meat and milk, and so on and on.
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David:
Okay… so at long last I understand that I did understand, but I disagree..
As for whether the Sages understood things as you do or not—it matters a great deal. If they understood it as you do, then I have a lot of difficulties from places that, in my view, clearly show otherwise. And if you are the first, then seemingly what is needed before anything else is humility (intellectual humility, of course, not moral humility, heaven forbid): if everyone until today understood that we have here a vast array of commandments, most or all of which serve moral values, and only I don’t understand it, then maybe I need to make more of an effort to understand, or turn to modes of thought different from the ones I’m used to.
As for the examples you gave, I’m obviously not really qualified. I don’t have the intellectual skill, breadth of knowledge, or refinement of character needed to give reasons for Scripture. But I can offer, in very general terms, directions I’ve heard in the name of great and wise figures: eating pork—the Sages expound the verse and say that eating impure animals dulls the heart, which leads to immoral behavior. Observing the Sabbath—two reasons are given in the verses: the first is imitating God, which very indirectly leads to moral behavior (just as He is merciful, so you should be merciful; just as He rests on the seventh day, so should you, etc.), and the second is distinctly moral—that on the one hand you remember that you were a slave, and on the other hand you feel how second-rate such a reality is. And that is also the reason the verse gives for the rest of slaves and animals. Meat and milk—avoiding a demonic practice of cruelty, stemming from the assumption that when one performs acts of cruelty toward animals, the demons, satyrs, and the rest of their crowd “get what’s theirs” and then leave us alone to live our lives in peace. Seemingly the Torah calls for a moral attachment to God, whose mercies are upon all His creatures, and He is the one who will save us from those infernal forces. Not yielding to them but fighting them. (And I think I saw somewhere that this is also one of the reasons for covering the blood.)
But all this theoretical play, from an amateur like me, is secondary. The important question is whether the commandments as a whole, as an entire behavioral system, are meant to make us better people toward all that exists—toward the inanimate and plant world (an expansion of the prohibition of needless destruction), toward animals (preventing animal suffering, Sabbath, the ox and donkey, etc.), the human body (no need to give examples), the human soul (visiting the sick, accompanying the dead, and so on), and man’s relationship with his God (obviously), and surely another million aspects of reality that I’ve forgotten—or whether they are meant to advance goals that it is impossible to know, and then… what? How can one even begin discussing applications if one has no idea what the goals are?
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Rabbi:
After humility, still, a judge has only what his eyes can see. I see no moral implication at all, and I suspect that neither do you. All of these are baseless speculations that I assume even you don’t really believe. But even if you do—I don’t.
And by the way, even if not eating pork refined us and caused us to be more moral (I see nothing of the sort in reality), that still would not make it a moral purpose of the commandment. The eating itself does not lead to any moral goal, but to personal refinement that has moral implications. Taking a pill to refine one’s personality could do something similar, and I still would not see that as a moral act.
There is no connection between serving God and understanding the purpose. On the contrary, serving God that is done for the sake of goals (even positive ones) is service not for its own sake. Serving God means doing what He commanded because He commanded it. And the good end (which will presumably come) will come in the end. See Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance and in chapter 3, law 6 of the Laws of Idolatry. And after all, the halakhic ruling is that we do not derive law from the reason of the verse.
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David:
A. The practical implications are the laws themselves. After all, the commandment in Scripture is just in brief outline, and its ramifications in the Oral Torah over the generations are very far-reaching. Anyone who came and innovated on a practical halakhic issue (= an implication) presumably understood the reason somewhat differently. It’s much easier to see this in civil law, where the Sages are really trying to get into the mind of the Merciful One, how He conceives of monetary rights and obligations.
B. I don’t agree that taking a pill to refine the soul is not a moral act. If there is a way to make our good inclination stronger and our evil inclination weaker, and as a result to do more good deeds and fewer bad deeds—of course without paying any price—how is that not a moral act? What would you say about a pedophile who is offered a pill that would eliminate his attraction to children with no side effects at all—do you think his choice in such a dilemma has no moral significance? 
As for your saying that you don’t see it—I’m willing to argue factually about the degree of morality (in general terms, of course) of observant Jews as compared to those who are not. Let’s choose criteria for the morality of a community, examine how they are implemented, and check. I admit I haven’t done scientific research, but from my impression observance of the commandments leads not only to more moral behavior in practice, but also to a more morally oriented inner attitude toward the world. But of course Jews have always said this, and even non-Jews who were more sensitive to Jews said it as well (George Eliot, Hitler, and others). But beyond that: in my view the commandments are not a trick for arriving at morality. They themselves are morality. Imitating God is morality. Refraining from what He abhors is morality. The way I define morality begins with what I love and what I abhor, and ends with understanding what God loves and what He abhors.
  C. I’m surprised you referred me to Maimonides at the end of the Laws of Repentance. There I saw exactly what I’m saying—not to serve God out of love of reward and fear of punishment, but to fulfill commandments because that is the truth. For Maimonides, truth is what reason compels. And immediately he explains the importance of love of God, and the way to reach that is by striving to know and understand one’s Creator as much as one can. And he refers you to the Foundations of the Torah, where he explains
that love of God comes through engagement in the Account of the Chariot and the Account of Creation, which are the orchard it is dangerous to enter, and they are the great thing in the eyes of the Sages, as opposed to the small thing, which is the discussions of Abaye and Rava. And who was bolder than Maimonides, who expounded the reasons of the verses even before Rabbi Moshe de León and his holy circle? 
D. You still haven’t answered my fundamental question:
If I have no idea what the goals are, and I’m even forbidden to act for their sake, because that would not be for its own sake, what guided the Sages when they interpreted commandments not according to their completely plain meaning—for example, “an eye for an eye,” meaning monetary compensation? After all, there is no connection here to morality, only to some unattainable spiritual value?
Sorry for the length.
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Rabbi:
A. I didn’t understand the claim here. I wrote that your hypotheses have no moral implication. What are you claiming?
B. As I wrote, I have no problem with that. If that is the moral meaning you intend—fine. As for evaluating reality, it seems our impressions are very different. Your concluding sentences here contradict what you wrote above (are the commandments a way to become more moral, or are they themselves morality?).
C. You are ignoring the sources I sent you. To do the truth because it is truth in the Laws of Repentance, in my opinion, means the negation of independent rational decision found at the end of the Laws of Kings and in chapter 3, law 6 of the Laws of Idolatry (love and fear). And also see his words in his Commentary on the Mishnah at the end of the chapter on the sciatic nerve prohibition. The truth is that one should do things because God commanded them, not because I think they are correct (of course one may believe they are correct, but not do them because of that). See there in the following law the illustration from Song of Songs. That does not illustrate the purpose of the commandments, but the service done because of one’s relationship to the Holy One, blessed be He.
Maimonides did not derive law from the reason of the verse, and he also ruled that we do not do so. There is a difference between giving an interpretation of a commandment and deriving law from the reason of the verse (which is shaping halakhah by means of purposive interpretation).
D. The question was not what guided the Sages, but why we perform the commandments. This is again a confusion between deriving law from the reason of the verse, interpretation, and the motivation for observing the commandments. As for the question of what guided the Sages, you can ask that directly from the halakhah that we do not derive law from the reason of the verse. I answer this in my book, and it’s hard for me to expand here. Briefly, I’ll say that this is interpretation and exposition that are not derivation from reasons (like a phenomenological theory in science). And the fact is that the Sages did not do this except with the backing of a textual exposition. According to your view, they should have used reason alone.