Q&A: Regarding “Truth and Not Certain”
Regarding "Truth and Not Certain"
Question
Hello Rabbi, my name is S’. In the past I asked the Rabbi several questions, and perhaps the Rabbi remembers.
I need a small clarification regarding the end of the book Truth and Not Certain.
At the end I didn’t understand what the difference is between faith as your mental state and Rabbi Shagar’s mental state. That is, I understood very well (and experienced it myself after reading Tablets and Broken Tablets) why Rabbi Shagar’s approach, for example, is a kind of intellectual split, and the person doesn’t really believe.
I understand that you represent something else, even though it has no certainty, as you emphasize—but if it has no certainty, how does it not have doubts?
How in the end does a person not live in that same split? If I know that I’m right, and I believe, but I’m not certain…
Again, not as a worldview; intellectually I understand how it works, but as a mental state.
Second, I’d really be happy to understand why you are so opposed to certainty in faith in God. It seems to me that the Torah actually demands this as something quite basic, and the history of the Jewish people has shown that there are many fine people who succeeded in believing with certain faith. Maybe there are people whose psychological makeup, for all kinds of reasons, doesn’t allow them to believe that way (and I’m deliberately saying that this is a certain psychological structure, even though the “believers” also have a different psychological structure of their own, but I relate to that one as the normal thing), but why generalize this inability as something that cannot be attained?
In addition, you wrote that you don’t understand what people mean, or don’t appreciate the talk about “faith is beyond reason and knowledge,” etc. And again I don’t understand why. Faith in God is necessarily faith in someone whom we do not grasp with the intellect. I can reach the conclusion that He created the world, but I will never know Him. It’s not so hard from there to reach the conclusion that the inner experience of faith is connected to deeper inner layers of a person (I think you wouldn’t disagree with me that they exist), and that the way to reach them is not necessarily through the intellect. Rather, for example, through refining one’s character traits, making a person gentler and therefore more fit to perceive reality in a more accurate and therefore more divine way.
Beyond that, there are many people who met great figures such as Rabbi Eliyahu of blessed memory, or the Baba Sali of blessed memory, and as you yourself have mentioned on a number of occasions regarding the story with the pigeons—and about the closed-mindedness of people who absolutely refuse to accept these stories—
these are stories that happened, and they have many witnesses. That is, this whole connection to miracle and wonder doesn’t necessarily have to be something we distance ourselves from so much.
I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
Thank you very much!
Answer
Hello S’.
First, I think it is difficult to say that Rabbi Shagar did not believe. His teaching is not a doctrine of lack of faith. In my opinion, he did not interpret himself correctly, and the truth is that he was indeed a believing person (even a very believing one).
1. My faith does contain doubts, in the sense of uncertainty. But doubt in the halakhic and practical sense is a 50% doubt, meaning no preference for option A over B, or vice versa. If you understand this intellectually, I don’t see the problem you’re raising. I live with it just as I live with every insight and piece of knowledge I have, all of which are uncertain, and yet I still act on them.
2. I am not opposed to certainty; I simply do not believe that a person can attain it. And even if some person reports certain faith, in my opinion he does not understand what certainty is, or does not understand himself. A person cannot have certainty about anything, since any person can make mistakes and probably has done so more than once. Even if you are right—and I’m really not sure that you are—the history of the Jewish people proves at most that there were people who lived with a feeling of certainty. But in my view they were deceiving themselves, or they called certainty what I call probability.
3. I am fairly skeptical about all kinds of such stories, based on personal knowledge. I have already seen quite a few stories that turned out to be false and were revealed to be naïveté or even fraud. Go and check the magic stories of Oren Zarif and other charlatans. There are quite a few innocent people, and people who are not skilled in probability and statistics, and it is very easy to lead them to absurd conclusions. You should read my column on alternative medicine.
In all areas of our thinking we use intuition, and as I explained in the book, this is an inseparable part of the intellect and of our rational thinking. I have never in my life seen a situation or an inference that required positing something beyond the assumption that we have intuition. Therefore my conclusion is that when people speak about something beyond the intellect, either they mean intuition (and don’t understand that this is part of the intellect), or they are talking nonsense (or trying to evade the need to deal rationally with difficulties and doubts).
And again, I don’t need to distance myself from these stories; I simply tend not to believe them. From experience. Of course miracles may happen, and I cannot rule out their existence. But my starting point is that whoever speaks about a miracle bears the burden of proof. Not necessarily because he is lying. In most cases this is someone who is not skilled in systematic thinking. See also: alternative medicine.