Q&A: Will, the First Cause, Objective Modesty, and Religious Coercion for the Religious
Will, the First Cause, Objective Modesty, and Religious Coercion for the Religious
Question
Hello Rabbi,
1. What do you think about the following argument:
Everything is subject to a cycle of causes and effects; there must therefore be an initial cause that is different from the circle of causes and effects. What else is outside the circle? Will. From here it follows that the first cause has will and is, in some sense, similar to the kind of intelligence familiar to human beings.
2. One of the arguments of supporters of the LGBT community, and of advocates of permissiveness in general, is that the various laws of modesty are just a subjective matter—simply rules that we loaded onto ourselves. But in my humble opinion, since rules of modesty exist in all cultures of the world to one degree or another (the more primitive the culture, the less restrictive its modesty rules), this is a natural impulse at the basis of the human species. If so, can they be compared to morality? Just as morality is objective, is this objective too?
3. Forcing a secular person to keep commandments is foolish, since without faith his commandments accomplish nothing. But what about weak / “light” religious people? Can they be forced to be strict about every commandment, minor and major alike? After all, they do believe. I wouldn’t want people to force me, and I don’t want to force others, but it’s hard for me to find a good argument against it?
Answer
- This is the cosmological proof.
- First of all, the claim that the more primitive a society is, the more permissive its modesty norms are, is of course a blatant case of begging the question. But even if you were right, many things are implanted in us, and the question of which of them are normatively binding and which are not is open to debate. The fact that something is implanted in us does not mean that it is binding. We also have an impulse to speak slander. It seems to me that modesty belongs to the category of conventionally accepted notions, not intellectually demonstrated truths (see my column on that distinction).
- What emerges from the sources is that in a halakhic regime they would be coerced. But until we reach a situation in which this is actually implementable, it is hard to state anything definitively. Perhaps whoever lives in such a situation will understand that it is not right to do this, and then it will not be done. In our current situation, I too am against it, but again, that is because we live in a very particular society and environment. There is not much point in discussing what would be right to do in a society unfamiliar to us.