Q&A: Intuition
Intuition
Question
Hello and blessings,
Question: The Rabbi explains in his first book that it is rational to believe in God because of the following claims:
- Intuition is an important tool for understanding the world.
- An ordinary person asks himself what created the world, since every person has the principle of causality within his own awareness even apart from the world.
- There are two possibilities left: 1. an infinite regress of cause and effect; 2. there is a being to whom the principle of causality does not apply, and we have no way of understanding it, and it created everything. Therefore the required conclusion is number 2, which is more reasonable. I understand numbers 1 and 2, but not 3, because in my opinion the Rabbi is assuming two extreme options when it is possible to go in the middle direction. That is: on the one hand, we are talking about some entity that is first and from which everything begins, but it is not something alive with a will; rather, it is nature. Nature is something very wise that has a beginning and an end, only we do not see the beginning and end and we do not understand it because we are still not wise enough. The main practical difference would be regarding the giving of the Torah, because the Rabbi’s First Cause is a being with will, meaning someone, and therefore He also gives the Torah. According to my view, it is something, and a thing does not give things, at least not things that are ideas. In my opinion this is much more reasonable, because if we look at nature we see nature without any will, since no palm tree can decide one day to move from neighborhood 1 to neighborhood 2. So when it comes to the creation of the entire physical world, why should we give it a different kind of cause? On the one hand we have a pretty good intuition about this, and also experience, that the nature we see has no will at all. And I would add that I also have a very strong intuition, and I think many people have it: in our tradition God is good. That same good God created a world and put human beings into it who suffer there a great deal, and have only a little good [physically speaking, that is true for most of the world]. And not only that, but He put them into the world with no explanation of why He needs all this, after all He is all-powerful. And not only that, but He gave us a Torah that is very hard to keep, and even that it is not clear why it needs to be kept. And not only that, but one of the important things in Judaism is to give up one’s life, as Rabbi Akiva said that he had waited for this. I am sorry, but my intuition is that if God is good, He would not do all this. It does not matter if they call evil good; it is still evil. So I am left with two options: 1. If the tradition is true, then God is evil. 2. The tradition is not true, and God is an incomprehensible nature as above. I think option 2 is much more reasonable.
Thank you.
Answer
I did not get into the question of what that being is that created the world. That being is defined as God. The question whether He has will and judgment and so on—my view is yes, but I did not get into that. If He has no will, then the question of how complexity arose applies to Him too. But again, that is a different discussion.
Discussion on Answer
This makes a big practical difference for me—whether we received the Torah or not. So I would be very glad if the Rabbi would address the whole question too, even if it is not difficult for the Rabbi the way I mistakenly presented it.
I did not understand what the question is or what you are claiming. Are you suggesting that God (the entity that created the world) lacks will and judgment? That is plainly unlikely, as I wrote here briefly. And the fact that we do not see will in the world has nothing to do with the nature of whoever created it. A law also has no will, but the lawgiver does.
I am claiming that in the end the Rabbi’s proposal and my proposal have the same elements: they created everything, they are the beginning and the end, and in both cases it is not clear to us how they exist on their own. The only difference is that according to the Rabbi it has will and thought, while according to my view it does not, for two reasons. A. We see reality as it is—without will. True, that does not necessarily prove that there is no spiritual entity with will behind it, but I am going according to the Rabbi’s own approach that sound reasoning is enough. And here, since even if we say what I suggest it will not be difficult to explain how everything began, and when you add to that the fact that reality is inanimate and shows no will, why say the opposite? The Rabbi explains in his book Occam’s razor, that it is better to minimize unnecessary assumptions. So if so, why here does the Rabbi want to assume that besides nature, which is inanimate and lacking will, there is an abstract entity with will? We can manage just as well with a natural entity without will, as above. B. If we say like the Rabbi, that there is an entity with will, and it is explained in the written and oral tradition that God is good, then why would He put us into such a mess with so much suffering like this world? Even without the tradition this question should be asked, but according to my view it is not difficult, because we are dealing with a blind system that we have no understanding of at all.
???
Are you trying to ask something? You wrote what you think, and I explained my position.
Usually when two people argue, each one says his side with reasons. So if I had only said my side without reasons, just from pure intuition—this is what I think, period—I would understand your honor’s response. But I did lay out reasons that in my opinion are accepted by any reasonable person as a matter of common sense, so why is your honor not answering the reasons one by one?
Thank you
What does it mean that the Rabbi is not answering:
1. The Rabbi does not have time to get into such a long topic
2. I am talking nonsense
3. 1 and 2
I wrote that I do not see a question here. I addressed your position, and I do not see why I need to repeat that. As for suffering in the world, I have written about it here many times, and that is a different issue.
That is it. We have exhausted it.
Okay. But regarding the possibility I am raising, what does the Rabbi think?