Question

Hello Michael, and thank you.

The aims you express in your thought and writing on every platform have helped me a great deal. My mind has found rest in the marketplace of ideas you offer, including in your books.
 
I too share the general idea and logic, and the beneficial foundations at the base of your thought. It’s unbelievable how much clear-eyed perspective simply makes sense, and how a lean Torah built on everything that underlies it is the most reasonable thing among all that others have to offer.
 
But I am a worm and not a man in these areas, and honestly I could never have come up with some of these ideas—certainly not with such endless depth and such systematic presentation. 
 
Your contribution is great, because I tend to think that there is a God and that there is some connection between God and Israel. The authority of the sages, as understood in your books, also makes sense. The categorical distinction between morality and Jewish law is no less than amazing, and the thought that there is no certainty, yet at the same time we must accept it just as we take for granted some other basic assumptions and axioms, is also one of the wonders. The reserved attitude toward midrashim, toward factual assertions, and the healthy interpretation of Hume and Kant also contributed their part for me. 
 
That’s how I came to know you online, when I was looking for discussions on issues connected to God (from a traditional-secular home), and you popped up on YouTube. For the first time, an Orthodox person who looks reality in the eye, with all that implies, and not the disgusting nonsense that so many others are selling. 
 
From YouTube I naturally moved on to what seems no less good: among them, Spirit of Law, Two Carts…, God Plays…, The First Available, No Man Has Power over the Wind, Walking Among the Standing, Truth and Not Stability, and the like.
 
I didn’t observe commandments until I got to know you, certainly not as I do today. I live a somewhat secular life, and I feel it can be conducted in parallel. So too with regard to the Sabbath, family purity, the Shema morning and evening, tefillin (I don’t pray), and other commandments. 
 
In short, many thanks.
 
By the way, I heard one of your debates with Aviv Franco. It was wonderful. In one part you were asked whether you had ever seen a cause that does not precede the effect but is simultaneous with it, and you answered, “I’ve also never seen an equilateral triangle.” In that context, can’t one say that the shadow and the body maintain a simultaneous causal relationship?
 
Sabbath peace.