Question

Comments on the article “From Deism to Theism”
Hello and blessings,
As you wrote several times in the article, the overall picture emerges from the totality, and even if each consideration by itself seems weak, the combination of considerations gains force, in the sense that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So it is hard for me to assess the weight of the “whole,” and yet I would like to raise what struck me from that whole and get your response to the questions that trouble me.
I’ll say what is obvious from the article: in the end, just as at the beginning, we are dealing with one binary question. Was there a revelation at Sinai or not? If there was — credit to the believers. If there wasn’t — discredit to the believers, and vice versa. And yet, within that framework, we are trying to reach some kind of decision on this question.

1. You open the article by saying that after we are convinced of the existence of the God of the physico-theological argument, and convinced by the ontological and cosmological arguments — and even by the existence of the moral God — we are already close to understanding that there are “religious” purposes to the world. You analyze the reason for creation by saying that before creation there were three options: a. not to create; b. to create a perfect world; c. to create and grant choice. From the fact that there is choice, it follows that the world was created so that its repair would do something outside the world itself — namely, affect what preceded the universe. What is that? The answer: something that serves as a cause of the world, that is, religion — the service of God — founded on the complex situation God created (or to some extent was “forced” into), the secret of contraction, and the Ari’s statement on “Give strength to God.” But this itself is difficult, because it does not fit with divine perfection. It is a bombastic heading from Kabbalistic thought, but in the end it is an argument that says God wanted something from human beings. In other words: there is an answer that seems called for by the circumstances, but it does not fit with one of the basic principles of monotheism, so we are replacing one problem with another.

Summary of this question: as stated, if there was revelation and the “religious” God revealed Himself to us and said that He gives the Torah and wants us to keep it — great, fine. Whether He told us about the secret of contraction or not is no longer so significant; the main thing is that He revealed Himself. If He did not reveal Himself — then the secret of contraction remains just one more theory among theories about the world. So we have gone in a circle back to the question of revelation.

1. You raise a familiar argument (I saw it at the end of a collection of notes by Rabbi Wasserman, and also in “Bad Faith” by Rabbi Moshe Shapiro), that it is reasonable to think that God would “explain” to us the purposes of creation and the means to advance them. a. As you yourself write: this is anthropomorphizing God. b. Even today, after the Torah was given, there is tremendous lack of clarity in choosing the right path, so it seems that this did not really work. It becomes circular, because people say the Torah was given so that there would be a path, but it doesn’t really seem that there is a path, and then they say that this itself is the test and the hiddenness, etc. — so maybe the hiddenness is even greater and there is no Torah at all, and everyone must search on his own. And what about the 2,000 years of chaos? No revelation reached them??
2. The conclusion of everything is the degree of reliability of the report about revelation. As emerges from the article, we have no way to measure the likelihood of revelation. It is certainly a departure from the natural order, but it is definitely possible. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the description of the revelation at Sinai is certainly exceptional and unique in comparison to other traditions. The anchors that exist for preserving the tradition of revelation are also extremely impressive. The question is: what is the method, and what weight should be given when trying to assess the truth of traditions as against theological difficulties and contradictory historical claims?? The tradition claims: there was revelation. But does the fact that for 2,500 years there has been no revelation at all not carry counterweight? Is it reasonable that God’s will would be conveyed in a one-time broadcast for tens of thousands of years? Nachmanides says that God will not perform a sign for every denier, but is a sign not called for, for millions of believers, once every 2,500 years? (Again, we are dealing here with a description of the “whole,” and I am trying to see how one challenges the whole.) And what will we say if there is no sign for a million years? Is there any kind of deadline or any kind of state of affairs such that we could say in advance: if this happens or does not happen, then it will become clear that the revelation is false? (Like what Maimonides says at the end of the Laws of Kings about other religions — that when the true King Messiah comes, everyone will realize and know that their ancestors inherited falsehood.)
3. You write that the very fact that there are imperial promises in the Torah gives supporting weight to the credibility of revelation. But does the fact that there is no way to put religion to one real test case not create a reliability problem? (When it says “so that your days may be lengthened,” and we see a child who fell and died — people say this means “in a world that is wholly long.” When it says “and you shall gather in your grain” — that refers to a generation that is wholly perfected. When the later prophets prophesied things that were not fulfilled at the return to Zion, people say that refers to the end of days. So even biblical statements that are open to empirical refutation are not impressive, because every miss is open to interpretation in a way that allows faith in the text to continue even though it is not fulfilled.) Another question: is there any text that the believing public sees as a text such that, if it is not fulfilled literally, it would be grounds for heresy? Or is there some deadline for the fulfillment of such a text? For example, even a defined number of years, such as “your seed shall be a stranger… four hundred years,” gets interpreted retroactively from Isaac’s birth, and even there it says once 400 and once 430.)

(An example of the reliability problem:) People say that the Holy One, blessed be He, has a covenant with the people of Israel (and this is one of the roots of the argument with Christianity), and at the same time they say that in the sin of the Golden Calf, the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to wipe out the people of Israel and only Moses our rabbi prevented it, etc. Maybe you will answer that this itself was the fulfillment of the covenant, since Moses our rabbi would certainly choose to uphold the covenant and God would certainly respond to him. Of course there are answers, but in the end we are dealing with the one and only question: revelation.
A challenge to the religious outlook: the belief in individual providence is hidden from statistics. I have not conducted an empirical study and I do not know whether one exists, but I have done unscientific attempts to find out whether one can see a difference between religious groups and non-religious ones in rates of cancer or accidents, etc. As far as I can tell, there are no supporting findings, and one must honestly say that there is almost no way to isolate the cases and answer this question, because the question of who is religious, who is innocent or liable, or what circumstances lead to survival or death is extremely complex, and in almost every religious component there are psychological and social factors that can also change the picture. Intuitively, and to the best assessment of doctors, there is no connection between religiosity and beliefs and rates of harm. The working assumption is that no difference will be found between the different populations. It is important for me to emphasize: the question is not why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. The question is whether empirical, intuitive reality strengthens the idea of individual providence (including the power of “repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree”) or negates it. And the answer is that it negates it. Again: we are dealing here with determining our attitude to the overall picture.

1. So we return to the basic question, the only question: to what extent can we affirm the fact of revelation?

A very basic and fundamental question: is recognizing the truth of the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai something with religious validity, or with historical-factual validity? If it has religious validity — then it is circular belief: by religious authority you believe in the religion. If it has purely historical-factual validity — then should it be examined and debated in the history faculty, or in the faculty for the study of religions? Or in other words: to clarify revelation, do I need to speak to a historian or to a rabbi?
The same question in another style: for some reason, most people who received a religious education think the revelation is a historical fact, and most people who did not receive a religious education think there was no revelation. If we are dealing with a dispute about the existence of a historical event, the correlation ought to be much lower. (I am not talking about people who became religious because they were convinced of the historical truth of revelation; in that case the connection between the historical and religious outlook is unambiguous. I am talking about people born religious and people born non-religious. Why is their view of historical facts so different?) (You addressed this question under the heading “Another look at the significance of religious education,” where you wrote that education is needed in order to develop the tools of intuition, but my question is: why should a simple question like one’s attitude toward a historical story depend on “developing tools of intuition”? Or in other words, when God carried out the revelation at Sinai, which was mainly meant to provide confidence in knowledge, is there not here a failure in the ability to know what would happen? Are we human beings once again to blame because the medium is not clear enough?
And on the same matter: many of the traditionalists on whom faith is based often behave in a kind of faith-based “taboo” way, and therefore, for example, do not accept facts that exist in the world, such as dinosaurs or the age of the world, in a way that raises serious suspicion (in my eyes) about their intellectual honesty — which raises questions about their critical ability regarding revelation as well. The question is whether people are capable of being critical on this issue. I would add that the sages of Israel who did engage in a systematic and honest attempt to understand and investigate did not succeed in reaching understandings easily. Thus, for example, Maimonides and Gersonides, who reached borderline conclusions, receive a great deal of criticism. Likewise, in the responsa of the Rivash, despite the respect he has for them, he brings them as a problematic example. And to emphasize: my question is not about the issue of studying science, but about the fact that there is no way to arrive at clear information on the question of questions, so the argument is chasing its own tail: there is an expectation that human beings will recognize the truth, but that truth is absent.
 

1. The attitude toward other beliefs: you say that it is reasonable that people raised on other beliefs in other places, like Poland or the Sahara, hold on to their faith in a similar way. I of course agree with that, but in my eyes that itself is a refutation, because you are basically admitting that after everything and before everything, this is what drives us — those foundational stories that we simply cannot detach from, and we will always find a way to validate them. And on the substance of the matter, you say that one should give up exclusive discourse, because either there really was another revelation to other peoples, or even if they are mistaken they deserve fair treatment from us and from the Holy One, blessed be He. I am surprised that you write that the God your tradition describes to you is one who would accept such a mistake with fairness and understanding. I do not know what you mean, because you yourself describe the exclusive picture that exists throughout the Torah. There is almost no inclusive discourse of the kind you describe. On the contrary, all the laws of idolatry deal with non-acceptance of other views. There is no place for idol worshipers, and Christianity, as is well known, according to Maimonides, is idolatry. You say that God does not ignore considerations of coercion, but are you not familiar with Rabbi Chaim’s formulation about a poor miserable heretic? (Based on Maimonides.) And that is only about someone who erred because of the plain meaning of the verses.

 
I allow myself to add a few words.
From these questions of mine, as well as from the experience of all the sages in all generations, members of the covenant and non-members alike, it emerges that it is probably very hard (or there is no way) to arrive at knowledge higher than what you proposed in the article. So the question is: what do I expect you to answer, or what am I trying to find? It may be that my central question is this: is it still reasonable to accept a path (or let’s call it a religion) which, though impressive from many angles, still requires “the whole” that you worked so hard to assemble in order to decide its truth — and even then, maybe yes and maybe no. In the end, I keep being gnawed by the feeling that since:
a. All of us, and even the sages among us, simply follow what is familiar to us and what our ancestors handed down to us. So it is with us, and so it is with the whole world. We are constantly conducting a “campaign for what is desired.”
b. Since thinking differently from the principles of faith is heresy (with the deep meaning of that concept), this naturally and inevitably creates a form of thought imprisoned by many fears and restraints. How can a person get up in the morning, recite the blessings over Torah study, and then freely debate whether it is true?
 
So what then? Seemingly, what reality suggests, as long as we do not merit revelation — for thousands of years already — is either to try to determine God’s moral commands on our own, or to understand that since we were born where and to whom we were born, religious thought is forced upon us and we have no way to verify it except to submit to it, as much as we can.