Q&A: A General Question
A General Question
Question
I’m looking on from the side and seeing how you stand there like a stern security guard and firmly reject every attempt to argue for mysticism in Judaism, divine providence, miracles and wonders, righteous saints, and so on. You keep saying that the burden of proof lies with those who claim these things exist, and until that is proven they are nothing but nonsense, and one may mock them at every opportunity and present those who believe in them as irrational and crude.
What doesn’t add up for me here?
After all, in the eyes of most scientists, you too are considered a primitive, irrational simpleton when you claim that God exists and that one should believe in Him. The very same arguments and demands that you direct at us, they would direct at you. And you can’t really prove it to them scientifically and empirically.
So what then?
You say that although it is impossible to prove the existence of God, the revelation at Mount Sinai, and so on scientifically, you gather one proof from here and one piece of evidence from there, and say that you are willing to believe in things that are not empirical and not scientific on the basis of other evidence and proofs. So there are people who take this one step further and rely on other evidence and proofs for the existence of divine providence, miracles, mysticism, and so on—exactly as you do when you argue for the existence of God.
In the end, you and I are in the same boat. Neither of us can fully prove our beliefs scientifically and empirically, and both of us use other kinds of proofs and evidence that are not scientific. So it seems strange to me how you act as though you are the most rational and intellectual person around and that “the burden of proof lies on the claimant,” while making fun of everything that moves, when the scientist says those exact same things about you.
I would very much appreciate a reasoned answer, because I really do want to understand.
Answer
Somebody has to protect us, no?
The comparison you made seems very strange to me, especially for someone who says he really wants to understand. First, indeed, someone who claims that God exists also bears the burden of proof. Where did I ever write otherwise?! Second, in my opinion that burden of proof has been met quite well, since the evidence for His existence is very strong. If you think I’m scraping together weak evidence, then there’s no point in wasting time with such bizarre comparisons. Just don’t accept the evidence, or raise a question or difficulty about it. Third, the evidence in favor of the phenomena you described does not exist. And fourth, I really couldn’t care less what this person or that person says about me. The question is whether I am right and whether I have good arguments. When I argue against these phenomena, I do not rely on ad hominem, that is, on what this person or that person says, but rather present arguments. And as I said, whoever does not accept them—that is of course his right. Why should I care what all sorts of other people say about me?! And fifth, factually you are mistaken (that is, you are describing reality in a very tendentious way). It is of course true that many disagree with me (that is, with believers), but there are also many who do agree. Am I required to follow those who do not? Are they holier? Are they wonder-workers and miracle-performers? But as I said, this does not interest me very much. Even if there were fools as numerous as those who came out of Egypt, all of them together do not stand against a single argument. And this is true in both directions: both for fools who believe in baseless phenomena and for fools who do not believe in God.
Discussion on Answer
It seems to me that apparently you also didn’t understand your own question, and certainly not my answer. I generally really don’t feel threatened, and certainly not by nonsense like this.
Why indeed does the Rabbi not believe in all these things?
Seemingly there is no reason to reject their existence, just as there is no reason to accept it.
Is the fact that the Sages believed in this not sufficient reason? And even if not decisive reason, is it not at least a reason to lean in favor of their existence?
You asked the same question in a parallel thread and I already answered. I do not think the Sages had tools different from ours, and in fact it seems to me that we have an advantage over them. Our science is more developed, and in their time mysticism was part of the accepted worldview.
Maybe there was a reason that mysticism was part of the accepted worldview…
To say they were fools who believed nonsense? That’s not serious. And to say that the whole world back then believed nonsense? That’s even less serious.
I don’t understand what the problem is with saying that mysticism indeed exists, and has diminished over the generations: what used to be astrology and sorcery has today been reduced to séances and near-death experiences.
Think whatever you want. If you have an argument, present it and I’ll try to address it. I can’t do anything with declarations.
That is my argument: that all these things exist, and the proof is that everyone believed in them.
Therefore I wrote that in my opinion dismissing and ignoring them with the claim that they were primitive is nonsense.
The Rabbi is familiar with the Talmudic passage (it seems to me) that says that as long as a person does not know how many coins are in his pocket, the coins can increase or decrease.
The moment he knows, his knowledge seals off the possibility of mystical intervention; research and science have done this on a gigantic scale.
(I don’t really understand this, but I once read that quantum theory is built on the same principle—that human observation narrows and limits processes.)
Rabbi?
The Rabbi told me to raise the argument; I’d be glad for him to address it.
I told you to present an argument, not “to present the argument.” I don’t see an argument here, only a declaration.
I am proposing a theory that all the mystical things written in the words of our early sages really do exist, and due to the advance of science they have gradually diminished, as it says in the Talmud regarding coins in one’s pocket, and the advance of science has pushed out the possibility of mystical interventions.
And then the Rabbi’s dismissal of the words of the Sages because of their belief in strange things such as mysticism falls away.
If the Rabbi meant that I should write something else, let him tell me, and then there can be a discussion, and not just shouting from my side.
First, even you agree that today there are almost no such things. As for the matter itself, I did not dismiss the Sages; I said that they had a tendency to believe such things just as their surroundings did. You are suggesting that perhaps in their time it really was so. It is also possible that the law of gravity changed over the years. That is a theory that cannot be refuted. The Sages also believed in a flat world, and that at night the sun heats the groundwater because it passes beneath it, so apparently the shape of the world also changed since then. Who said the world is not dynamic?
Is such a thing actually written regarding the earth and the sun?
Yes.
The fact that the groundwater is warm was brought by Rabbi as proof for the position of the sages of the nations, that at night the sun goes beneath the earth. In any case, it seems from here that the Sages of Israel were prepared to learn from the sages of the nations if observable reality supported their position.
Best regards, Artziel Raz Ben-Shetach Kaduri
In the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Avodah Zarah, it is explained that the world is like a sphere. This fact was known to the sages of the nations in the time of the Sages. I am not aware of a place where the Sages say that the earth is flat.
As should have been written,
there’s no need to get hung up on a specific example. The idea is that, all in all, regarding knowledge about the world they accepted what the gentiles thought (as, if I remember correctly, is also proven from the passage in tractate Pesachim, and Maimonides writes this as well). So here too, if we are talking about mysticism that is not directly connected to Torah but is rather a result of things that seemingly exist in reality, they would accept what the gentiles say.
Where is this written?
So I was right when I told you I wanted to send this to you by email, because here you apparently feel very threatened and you immediately jump to defend yourself and go wild as if someone touched a sensitive nerve. So, honorable enlightened sage, take a glass of water and calm down. You didn’t even understand my question. The point was not “what people say about you”; the point was that from a purely scientific standpoint you too are considered an outlier and somewhat mystical because of your belief in God, which cannot in any way be proven scientifically and empirically.