Q&A: A Number of Questions
A Number of Questions
Question
First of all, I read your trilogy with great interest; fascinating.
The main question: how is it possible that God revealed Himself (at Mount Sinai) in such a way that people who come with clean hands, genuinely looking for proof that He gave the Torah, do not find it? Especially since this is not absolute proof but a matter of probability (according to your view, apparently). So it seems to me that if God wanted to reveal Himself, He would do it in such a way that if someone is truly looking for Him, he would find Him, no? I want to sharpen the point: it is not enough for me that it seems probable to you (or to me); the revelation has to seem probable to anyone who comes to examine it, and if not, that undermines the logic of God having revealed Himself at all.
A secondary question (and no less important): since the main proof for the truth of the Torah is the public nature in which it was given and the father-to-son transmission, and since we have the story in Nehemiah 8 where the Torah scroll was lost and only the priests found it (and I do not trust them all that much), then what proof do we have left? I assume there really was a scroll containing the Torah and it really was lost, but it is possible that the priests wrote whatever they wanted. Obviously interpretations can be made, but proof there no longer is, because if it says that the Torah scroll was lost, then we no longer have the father-to-son tradition regarding what was written in the Torah that was given, and all the commentators who explain whatever they want are only offering interpretation and not proof (I hope I was clear).
A secondary secondary question 🙂 You wrote nicely that when events happen in history, each side interprets them according to how it sees things. By the same token I ask: what is the purpose of the Torah if everyone can interpret it (including the Sages) however they want?
Answer
A. Questions about the way the Holy One, blessed be He, conducts Himself have only limited significance. If the evidence for His existence and His revelation is good, then at most I remain with a difficulty about why He did not reveal Himself differently. If the evidence is not good, then again it does not matter, because there is no reason to adopt the thesis of His existence and revelation. The question can be asked only if I am in an evidentially balanced state, but even there my assessments about the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His policy have very limited significance. Therefore, in my view, this question is not significant. I will only say that I do not see how one can reveal oneself in a way that cannot be doubted. Even the Holocaust, which happened just now, is not accepted by everyone, certainly not in all its details. So an event that happened thousands of years ago and is passed down by tradition cannot be any better. But as I said, it does not matter very much.
B. If you read the trilogy, you surely saw that I deal with this question. By the way, Nehemiah does not describe the finding of a Torah scroll but its public reading. The finding appears in the Book of Kings. But I address both of those passages in my book The First Existing Being.
C. The non-halakhic parts of the Torah indeed do not say very much. I do not know why they were written and what should be done with them. In the halakhic parts we have tradition and interpretive tools, and there the situation is different. I also discussed this at length in the second book of the trilogy.
Discussion on Answer
If in your opinion this difficulty, which seems quite weak to me, tips the scales, that means that from the outset the arguments in favor of God seem weak to you, and basically you are in doubt. If you are in doubt, then I have nothing to say to you, because indeed any weak difficulty, however slight, will tip the scales. That is not what I was discussing here. I am not in doubt and do not think there is any significant doubt. I explained this in the first book of the trilogy. To me it is astonishingly logical, but apparently you disagree with me. I cannot reproduce the whole book here again, and there is no point in doing so.
As for the P.S.: it is like someone who never studied quantum theory, and when you tell him there is Schrödinger’s cat he wants to have you hospitalized. There are claims that one must become familiar with and get used to in order to accept them. The claim that there is a God sounds bizarre and absurd to people because they did not grow up with it, so they get pushed into everything else. A person who grew up with religious education sees this claim as possible and legitimate, and therefore has no problem adopting it if it solves philosophical difficulties for him, etc. The secular person also has difficulties, but is unwilling to recognize the conclusion that there is a God because that claim seems absurd to him. There is a clear asymmetry here between the religious person and the secular person.
Thanks for the detailed response. Sorry, but I do not understand your answer A. If you were claiming that the proof in itself is absolute, I would understand (though not agree 🙂 that this is how God wanted to reveal Himself and give His Torah, and that is His right. But since the proofs are partial and we are dealing with matters of logic and probability, and as you wrote in the fifth notebook, the argument from testimony is partial and only joins additional arguments that in the end create some degree of probability, my logic tells me that it is not reasonable that on the one hand God reveals Himself and wants everyone to recognize Him, while on the other hand He reveals Himself in a way that some of those genuinely seeking the revelation did not find Him. I understand that your logic is different (and that is really our discussion here: what happens when logic differs from person to person). Do you have a way to clarify for me why your way of thinking is more correct than mine? And if not, if in my opinion this claim alone outweighs the probability of your proof (and therefore there was no revelation), is there anything I can do about it, or is there no way for me to be convinced because it is just different logic and that is that?
P.S. Since there is no psychology category, I will ask you here: do you have an explanation for why usually, for a person who grew up in a religious environment, it is obvious that there is a God and he cannot understand the claims that everything simply always existed / came into being on its own, whereas for a secular person that sounds logical? I come from a religious home, I have heard their arguments, and I think they are bizarre (and likewise some of them think that about someone who believes there is a God). It is as if our minds just do not work the same way.
Thank you very much