Q&A: Dualism
Dualism
Question
Hello and blessings,
Is someone whose faith is based primarily on tradition able to be a dualist?
Why can’t we assume that almost everything written in the Torah is true? (Aside from God being one.)
Are there any decisive arguments against dualism?
I very much want to go on believing in one God, except that I haven’t found a good explanation for why to rule out some little cookie-cutter entity that might cause sabotage, yet would explain the problem of evil.
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. Who is forbidding you from believing in the existence of Satan? The Sages also apparently believed in this.
Beyond that, the question whether God is one or more than one is not very well defined. In my view these are just words. Is a person one being or a collection of cells/molecules/elementary particles? It’s a matter of scale and definition. Is a beehive or an ant colony one living creature or many? It’s a matter of definition.
Discussion on Answer
A. You should ask him. When we are speaking about idols, multiplicity has meaning (polytheism), but regarding an abstract God, about whom you know nothing, it is hard to define multiplicity or unity.
B. Which proof? For what?
A. Is Maimonides' proof that God is one correct?
"If there were many deities, they would be bodies and physical forms, because things that are counted and whose existence is separate from one another differ only by the accidents that occur to bodies and physical forms."
B. What does that imply for the world of ideas? Is everything one? Is there no good and evil? Is everything that is not a body or does not affect a body one?
A. It seems that he is basically saying that spiritual things cannot be multiple. That sounds absurd to me. There are, for example, several different souls (of different human beings). You need to check his words inside.
Beyond that, it seems he is assuming here Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and I disagree with him about that (see In Two Carts, Gate Two).
B. There is good and evil. These are not two entities but two categories. Maimonides was not talking about that.
A. If it is only a matter of definition, then what does Maimonides mean in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 1:7: "The knowledge of this matter is a positive commandment, as it is said: 'The Lord is our God, the Lord is one'"? And why did he bother to prove this knowledge at the beginning of the paragraph?
B. Is the proof a good one?