Q&A: Basing Faith on Rationality Among Non-Rational People
Basing Faith on Rationality Among Non-Rational People
Question
Hello Rabbi,
The question is being asked based on the Rabbi's “Faith” series on his YouTube channel. I watched the lectures some time ago, so I apologize in advance if I’m not precise about the details.
How can one say that God's demand that a person believe is an epistemic demand to investigate reality and arrive at conclusions through rational tools, when so many people (I would estimate most of them) are incapable of doing that? Most people, over the course of their lives, will not be exposed to the tools that would allow them to decide rationally, and I assume that many also simply do not have the cognitive abilities required for such a decision.
So many people in the public operate this way: deciding based on “what feels right to me,” and that is how they approach faith—both among those who believe and those who do not. So the question arises, at least for me: after all, God is the One who created us human beings this way! How can human beings be required to do something so clearly opposite to their nature, and be punished for failing to do it?
Another issue that bothers me more specifically in this context is women. For years I was very feminist on this issue: I thought the demand for rationality from women had to be equal to that from men, and I believed they were capable of it as well. But I encountered *absolute* rejection of this idea דווקא from women—a revulsion toward any confrontation of their worldview with internal contradictions, and toward pointing out irrationality in it. One woman even told me that for years she had tried to be feminist about this issue, until she realized herself that she acts according to what feels good and comfortable to her, and is incapable of acting otherwise.
Am I in fact correct in my understanding of the situation regarding women? (I would be so happy if the Rabbi would enlighten me and show me why I am completely mistaken.) If I am indeed correct, how can it be that God's demand is completely opposite to the nature of half the human species? How can it be that a creature was created who is so clearly opposed to the most basic demand made of it?
Answer
You are attacking something I never said. On the contrary, I have said more than once that there is no requirement whatsoever to investigate matters of faith. A person has to reach a conclusion whether he believes or not, and his way of doing so depends on him, his inclinations, his abilities, and his interests. If a person reaches the conclusion that there is a God purely by simple intuition, he is no less a believer than I am. There is no halakhic obligation to be a philosopher. There is an intellectual and human advantage to being a philosopher, but that is a different matter. It is not a halakhic requirement.
As for women, I also get the impression that there is a difference on this issue. They are also less interested in logical subjects and less likely to formulate positions in that way. That is my impression, although it is not backed by any systematic survey. By the way, recognizing this difference does not contradict feminism.
Discussion on Answer
I’ll repeat what I say. It is permissible to rely on intuition, either way. That is our most basic tool, and it is impossible without it. Philosophical analysis only brings intuitions from potentiality into actuality.
But intuition does not mean thinking for five seconds and just deciding. A person has to examine himself and decide what he believes. It is not a question of how long it takes, but of honest self-examination. That’s all.
Maybe I exaggerated in how I phrased the degree of rationality required, but what I meant was what the Rabbi spoke about in the series—people who decide whether to believe or to be religious based on what “feels good to me.” The initial assumption I raised was that most people decide that way, and not even on the basis of intuition while asking themselves, “Do I actually believe that God exists?”—and that is what led me to ask the question. If the Rabbi thinks this is a mistaken distinction, I would be glad to know why.
Beyond that—if God's epistemic demand of a person is indeed “satisfied” by simple intuition, what about simple people who just casually thought for five seconds about whether God exists and reached the conclusion that their intuition says no? Can their non-observance of the commandments really be accepted in such a situation, assuming they met the level of examination that was expected of them?