Q&A: Morality — the Purpose of Creation?
Morality — the Purpose of Creation?
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
In your YouTube lectures on faith / belief (and presumably also in The First Existent, which I still haven’t read), on the transition from deism to theism, you argue that it is impossible that God created the world for the sake of morality, because a created being cannot have been created for its own sake. (By the way, it reminds me of a cute sketch from the program Without Secrets that I saw as a child, in which a person carries a suitcase whose entire contents are just a hook for hanging the suitcase.)
In light of that, you argue that there must be some other religious purpose beyond morality, and therefore revelation and so on are plausible.
Well, as things stand I don’t understand why, from your perspective, one must move on to other religious commandments, such as putting on tefillin. (My question is separate from your claim about the value inherent in the command itself, as a commandment.)
After all, just as tefillin may have religious value even though we do not understand it, it is also possible that morality has religious value even though we do not understand it. That is, let us say that the purpose is morality, but not morality in its moral sense (for the sake of the people who were created), but morality in its religious sense:
I put on tefillin — I bring about some religious effect that I do not understand.
I do a moral act — I bring about some religious effect that I do not understand.
Suppose that at Mount Sinai the 613 commandments had not been given, but only: “Be moral!” Even then, would you still have found it difficult to understand how the purpose of the world could be moral actions?
If so, why can’t morality alone suffice as a religious purpose?
I’ll stress again: my question is separate from what you argue regarding the value of the command itself. (Here too, perhaps one could view moral intuition as a divine command?)
Answer
That is certainly possible. More than that, it is probably true. The proof is that some moral values entered Jewish law, such as the prohibition of murder and theft and the like. So we see that they have religious value as well, and not only moral value. Still, revelation is needed in order to tell us that there is religious value in this. It would have been possible to leave us to observe this morally and let the religious value come automatically, but commandments require intention, and the intention is to fulfill the obligation of that religious value.
Beyond that, even if it is possible, it is not necessary. And when a tradition comes along that there was a revelation and other commandments were given, it becomes clear to us that the purpose is not achieved through morality alone. I explained in the book that the a priori consideration joins the other considerations (such as the tradition).
And indeed, if at Mount Sinai it had been revealed that morality does all the work, I would have had no difficulty with that.
You assume that commandments require intention, and therefore morality without religious intention cannot be the purpose. But if we assume that the purpose is morality, and there is no need for intention in commandments because there is no Torah, then there is no difficulty at all.
In my opinion, because morality by itself contains many dilemmas and no clear instructions about what to do and how to decide in every moral situation that has no obvious answer—for example, whether abortion is a moral thing: on the one hand there is pain and suffering for someone who became pregnant by mistake, and on the other hand there is a living person in the womb, and every action affects the other side in a serious way—so it is not clear how to solve this without the Torah. And if everyone decides for himself what to do, then his reasoning is not that of the person who suffers from it, so why should he impose his opinion on the other side? In what way is he better? And if so, it is more reasonable that there would be instructions from the Creator about how to act, and at the same time the exceptional tradition we have certainly shows that it makes sense to accept it.
And it should be noted that if there are no clear moral instructions, the world can reach absurd things in the name of morality, and this can be seen from the morality of the Greeks, for example, in the ancient world (which included the killing of baby girls by their parents simply because they were girls, or the masses watching slaves / captives being killed by wild animals as a family attraction, and the like).
But on the other hand, most of the world are Gentiles who did not receive the Torah, so if in fact the purpose is morality made clear through the Torah (and commandment observance for Jews), why did only a tiny fraction of the world receive this instruction, while the whole world has to act according to its own understanding? What do you think about that?
It bothers me quite a bit, and I’d be very glad if you could resolve this for me!