Q&A: Assessing Plausibility in Matters of Faith
Assessing Plausibility in Matters of Faith
Question
Hello Rabbi,
How do you know how to assess the strength of different possibilities in questions of faith?
For example, one could argue that the Torah is entirely made up. Suppose the ordinary people did not know how to read or write, and so they accepted the Torah scroll, and after a few generations, as the Torah scroll was passed down, the mythology of the Torah began to develop among the people as a religion, etc.
Okay, so questions of this sort are one option. A second option is to accept that there was revelation, etc., and that everything is true.
A third option is that distortions crept into the Torah, because there are contradictions and apparently several authors of the Torah, but the foundation is certainly true.
So my question is: how do you assess the options?!???
Who says the second option is not preferable to the first? Or that the third is preferable to the first, and so on and so forth….
Thanks in advance.
Answer
Hello Moshe.
It is hard for me to answer you. It is like asking me how one assesses the probability that what I see really exists and is not an illusion. Or how one assesses the probability that someone on the street whom I asked how to get somewhere is telling me the truth. These are questions whose probability we evaluate based on our experience and reasoning. See my fifth notebook, where I deal with this a bit, and perhaps it will help you.
Discussion on Answer
Unfortunately, as I explained, no. With all my well-known righteousness, I do not see a way to do so beyond what you will find in the notebook there. You can also look at my book Truth and Unstable regarding the argument from testimony.
Hello everyone
A nice question, but not a useful one, as the Rabbi said. Experience allows us to estimate the probability of things…
So I will ask:
Do you think there is any chance that many people would hear a story and commands that include places and instructions concerning people and their forefathers from ancient times, and decide that everything they heard was mostly just an ordinary story, and over the years they “attached” additions to it, and then later generations began to believe that everything was true, including the beginning of the story? Come on, throw something out—what percentage would you give that? Personally, I give it an extremely low probability, because when people pass on a true story, they pass it on seriously, and they want to convey a serious message.
It does not matter whether they knew how to read and write for the purpose of transmitting the story and the message.
Contradictions in the Torah? Do the contradictions affect the serious message?
None of the possibilities you mentioned are worth much if you do not point to specific “points” at which you think the corruption began.
Because: a person does not live 30 years and die; he lives much longer. So if he passes on his grandfather’s story, his father and grandfather are still alive, and perhaps they are mentioned in the story or were present at the events described in it. Right? After all, the whole Torah speaks about our forefathers. So as I began by saying, the question is nice but not useful, and even rhetorical—but it still has to be raised. Because the fact is, if you asked, that is a sign that you probably did not know how to evaluate the chances on your own. So I hope that after hearing my words and the Rabbi’s words, you will assess the chances very correctly. Am I right?
Yes and no.
I completely understand what you are saying.
But I do not have an estimate of the probabilities.
Know that the chances of believing what I wrote and of fully understanding what I am saying are identical to the chances that all the words of the Oral Torah are true, so maybe that is also a hint for you—does that help you assess the probabilities (after the hint).
Hello to the honorable righteous Rabbi, may he live a good long life,
Would the Rabbi be able to give a more concrete answer on the matter?
Thanks in advance,
Moshe.