Q&A: Faith
Faith
Question
- Hello Rabbi, you often argue that if a person were to investigate his faith, he would reach the conclusion that there is no God, and even if he does not investigate, he is implicitly a heretic. And from that, of course, follows the obvious conclusion that everyone should investigate. I want to challenge the assumption that there is even an answer at all, even theoretically, as to what that person will believe after he investigates and what conclusion he will reach, since that decision depends on a great many prior decisions (how he will study, from whom, etc.). If I remember correctly, it is דווקא you yourself who says that even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot know what we will choose (because that knowledge does not yet exist).
Answer
Hello Noam. We are talking about a hypothetical experiment. Assuming a person were to examine all the considerations and take all the nuances into account, what would his decision be? Clearly, it is impossible to carry out such an experiment in practice. My claim does not depend on the result of a practical experiment, but presents a theoretical consideration. A person is either a believer or a heretic, and even if he lives in a way that does not fit what he is inwardly, we have not gained much. He is only hiding himself from himself. True, even if he checks and investigates, he will not necessarily arrive at his final conclusion, but then he has done what he could, and even if he was mistaken, at most he is acting under compulsion.
Discussion on Answer
According to you, a person is born a heretic or a believer and has no possibility of changing that (only of uncovering it). Determinism?
No. He arrives at it through his own judgment. But we are talking about complete judgment with all the considerations included. That does not mean that anyone can know it (including the Holy One, blessed be He, who also can only give the best possible estimate, and that estimate may be mistaken) until it is actually done. And still, the hypothetical consideration stands.
Now I understand the Rabbi’s intention better. I am left with just one difficulty: why does the Holy One, blessed be He, create people who, when they investigate and study as much as possible, will reach the conclusion, to the best of their understanding, that there is no Creator of the world? Seemingly I would have expected that with the best possible study, every person would reach the conclusion that there is a Creator.
By the same token, there would be no point in creating people who would arrive at faith in a deterministic way. It is not forced on us, but is a product of our judgment. He did not create the faith within us. It comes from our own judgment.
Something like this is the consideration behind Kant’s categorical imperative (see the fourth notebook). There too it is a hypothetical, not a practical, experiment, and many people erred in interpreting his words on that point.