Q&A: Knowledge of God
Knowledge of God
Question
Hello Rabbi, I wanted to ask: what is a good tool for arriving at the truth? I’m starting from the assumption that simple faith is not a good tool, because that means believing in the first thing you encounter, and the chances that it is the truth are small. And rational inquiry also isn’t good, because reason is not objective. For example, if you give several people the task of investigating whether there is a God, and if so what His relation to the world is, then even though each one investigates with reason, we will arrive at several different answers. So reason too is not a good tool for arriving at the truth. Does the Rabbi have an idea? Thank you.
Answer
There is no tool that is not open to those objections. You are supposed to make the best possible use of your reason and your intuition (= simple faith), and the Torah was not given to ministering angels.
Discussion on Answer
There definitely is. There is no way to reach certainty.
Isn’t it the other way around? If you use all your abilities, you can be certain that you reached the truth. But because you are not objective, the chance that it is actually the truth is very low (if several people do this, we may get several different answers).
Not the other way around. Exactly as I said. If you used all your abilities, is it obvious that you didn’t make a mistake?
So there is no way to reach the truth?