Question

In one of your lessons in the "Faith" series, you argued that it is impossible to obligate someone to believe, but there can be an obligation to examine faith, by virtue of its being a moral obligation, even without belief in the existence of the commanding authority itself. This picture fits well when מדובר in a skeptical person who is morally obligated to investigate the doubt. Can there be such an obligation—I mean responsibility in the heavenly sense, since he obviously would not come ask whether such an obligation applies to him—on a person who grew up as an atheist and therefore currently does not believe, and according to your view also is not supposed to believe in the moral obligation itself (since morality has no validity without a commanding authority)? Would the answer be different if that same atheist does believe in the validity of morality (albeit, in your view, mistakenly)? It seems that the second question is connected to a broader one: whether a person who believes something true for the wrong reasons bears responsibility like a person who believes that same thing for the right reasons.