Q&A: Skepticism
Skepticism
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Lately I’ve been overcome by an unbearable skepticism that I can’t get rid of. No rational argument resolves this crisis of faith / belief for me. No matter what people tell me, my feeling is that the deniers are always right. What’s happened is that I’ve simply become reluctant to read things by heretics / skeptics (for example, Eliad Cohen’s website, books by Yuval Noah Harari). Would it actually be worthwhile for me to read those materials, or would that not be good for me?
P.S. Why doesn’t the Rabbi use the Kuzari argument about revelation to an entire nation as proof of God? From what I’ve seen, people haven’t managed to refute that proof (of course it’s a bit more complex than how I presented it, but I assume the Rabbi knows the claim fully).
Answer
Hello.
Unfortunately, I do not know what to do with skepticism on the psychological level. I deal with it on the philosophical level.
Discussion on Answer
Look, with all due respect to the questioner, Eliad Cohen may seem at first glance like a talented person, but when you read what he writes on subjects you also understand, you can see that he probably has some understanding in many areas, but it’s apparently very superficial in each one… I wouldn’t be surprised if in quite a few parts he’s just quoting Wikipedia and so on.
P.S. I hope you’re not getting messed up by his bizarre statements about his interpretation of Rabbi Nachman…
I’m not a psychologist, but maybe instead of running back and forth between the claims of believers and deniers, you should dig a bit deeper into the claims of the believers? It seems to me that a lot of the arguments and alleged proofs about God are disputed on the basis of a few underlying assumptions, so if you form your view about those, there’s no reason for you to get worked up over other arguments… because you simply don’t accept their assumptions.
Really unfortunately, Rabbi?
(I mean, aside from the fact that you have no way to help the questioner.)