And at greater length in the article on causing a secular Jew to sin

Shay, it seems to me that you didn’t sharpen your question enough. One has to distinguish between the obligation to do the moral act and responding to a moral command. I think the Rabbi argues that when you choose to do a moral act based on reason, there is no response to a command here, because the category of commands was created at the revelation at Mount Sinai (just as the category of state laws was created with the establishment of the State of Israel). But even before that category was created, there was an obligation to do the moral act; it was just a different kind of obligation. The Rabbi sometimes calls such an obligation a Torah obligation (and not a halakhic one). Take, for example, the story of Cain and Abel: Cain was not commanded not to murder, and nevertheless, after he murdered his brother Abel, the Holy One, blessed be He, came to him with complaints. Note that the story of Cain and Abel happened before Noah was commanded in the seven commandments (“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed”). That is, one can learn from this that even without a command, the Holy One, blessed be He, expects and demands that we act according to morality.

I forgot to add that the generation of the Flood was also judged for robbery, and that too was before they were commanded about it.

Hi Oren,
I draw a distinction between a moral command and a religious command.
The moral command I understand through reason; I have no need to rely on one tradition or another.
By contrast, the religious command cannot be arrived at through reason, because by definition it is obedience to the voice of God that, according to Jewish tradition, was revealed to the children of Israel in the Sinai desert.
But it is a bit hard for me to build a full and binding way of life on the basis of an ancient tradition…
True, I accept the tradition as binding out of necessity (just as I accept the tradition that there was a king named Saul out of necessity), but I am not at peace with it because it is such a very unusual and strange event…

Shay,
I don’t understand what necessity you mean. Was there a revelation at Mount Sinai or not? Is it binding or not? What necessity could there be here besides logical necessity? I really didn’t understand your question/claim. Why should I care if the event was very unusual and strange? (Why strange?) The Big Bang was also unusual and strange. So does that mean it didn’t happen?

Hello Rabbi Abraham, and thank you for responding.
My problem with the witness argument for observing the commandments is that the argument is disconnected from my everyday life.
What interests me about religion is that I want to resemble God (that is, to be a good person just as God is good) in an experiential way, out of genuine desire, out of identification.
I do not want to do senseless acts (that is, the commandments of the Torah) just because “that is what God commanded three thousand years ago.”
I want to identify with my actions the way I identify with moral acts (because I understand them through reason).

Good luck.
That is, you are not religious but moral, and you want to be a good person. Perfectly fine. That is of course your right.