Q&A: Two Questions
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Two Questions
Question
- Does the Rabbi have lectures—or recommendations for lectures—on the chapter dealing with seeing a stain and the laws of stains (and seeing versus sensation)?
- When the Rabbi says that the concept of “God” is binding by virtue of its very existence—even though one can continue and ask, “What is obligation at all?”—how is that different from saying that morality is binding by virtue of its own essence (as in the view of Sam Harris and the like)? In other words, if I am convinced that there cannot be any external—or objective—authority, but that the only source of obligation comes from my evolutionary and environmental feeling, is there still an analytic difference between “God” at the top of the hierarchy and merely the intuition to avoid pain?
Answer
1. No.
2. Morality too is binding by virtue of its own essence, but that is only because its existence derives from a lawgiver who legislated it (God). Without that, you can of course say the words that morality is binding, just as much as you can say that a rooster’s crow is binding. There is no logic or basis to that. Clearly, if you have a feeling whose source is evolution, there is no reason to believe it. Nor can you believe in evolution itself (that is, the scientific theory).