Q&A: Why Do People See Religious People as Irrational?
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Why Do People See Religious People as Irrational?
Question
Hello, in the latest podcast you said you hadn’t thought in an organized way about why people mistakenly think that a secular person is rational and a religious person is irrational, even though the truth is the opposite. I thought about it, and it seems to me that one of the reasons is that the non-halakhic midrashim of the Sages sometimes create the impression that religion as a whole is based on mere speculation.
Answer
You’ve gone completely overboard. Do you really think anyone knows those midrashim? Besides, those midrashim are not emotion but reasoning that we do not understand.
In my opinion, religious people really do tend more toward belief in irrational things, and some of them even put it on the table openly (a leap of faith, going beyond reason, and so on), so the image is accurate. What is not true is that rational, matter-of-fact thinking leads to secularity. Here the opposite is true.