Question

Hello Michael, sorry in advance for the length.
In the lectures and in the fifth booklet (as far as I remember), you don’t discuss historical arguments in favor of the Jewish tradition, and you say that the “witness argument” does not carry especially strong weight on its own, and that only when one looks at the overall body of evidence does a picture emerge that is strong enough to adopt the commandments.
If I briefly summarize the conclusion that emerges from the other proofs in the earlier booklets—
God created the world and us for some purpose external to the world, and it is apparently dependent on our choices, since He gave us free choice.
But at this stage, a few possibilities occur to me that could fit this purpose, without ignoring our free choice:
1 – To create a non-deterministic world: it could be that the main purpose of creation is not specifically connected to human beings, and that their whole purpose is just to create within it a dimension that cannot be predicted in advance—through free choice, to do as we wish. For some reason, a world whose future is not fixed is more “interesting” to God.
2 – Our creation is itself the goal: just as an artist can enjoy painting a certain picture, but after finishing it won’t necessarily care where it is hung or whether it is used at all, so too the fact that God has some sort of “religious” value in our creation does not mean that He cares about its consequences. For some reason, He prefers to create us specifically with free choice, and our existence in the world is only a consequence of that, and He does not care how we use the ability to choose.
 
3 – Our sense of hesitation has value for Him: God gains something from putting people in a state of dilemma about what they will do, and in order to achieve that a person must have free choice. In this case one could even say that giving commandments and instructions to a person would only interfere with the purpose of creation, since it would reduce the situations in which he feels torn.
4 – Every choice a person makes has equal value for Him: a person’s independent choice of a certain action does indeed constitute a goal for Him, but the decision itself is the goal, and there is no special weight דווקא to specific actions. In fact, this is a principle that in any case exists in the world—for example, if I have one coin and in front of me are two poor people whom I do not know at all, clearly there is no significance to the choice of which one to give it to. I suggest extending this principle and arguing that perhaps (if the decision itself is the goal) even the option of not giving the coin to either of them has value equal to the other two options.
5 – The deontological dimension of morality: you argue that moral decisions really can be the “religious” repair that God expects from us, but only on condition that we are aware of this (through revelation), and thus we will not relate to morality merely as a means for improving society.
On the other hand, you mentioned in several places that you have no indication that religious people behave more morally than secular people or atheists. If so, I do not understand on what basis one can decide that God prefers moral choices made specifically as a result of explicit revelation, over the same behavior carried out in a way where the person doing it is not necessarily aware of the purpose. One might even think of advantages to instilling only a natural moral sense in a person, rather than a one-time revelation that can be forgotten and distorted over the years.
The possibility that God expects us to choose specifically certain actions that are not morality may sound to us more likely and perhaps less strange, but He does not necessarily “think” the same way we do.
A priori, all the possibilities have equal probability.
You pointed out that the “witness argument” does indeed have some weight, meaning that the credibility of the Jewish tradition gives some preference to the possibility that He specifically requires from us certain actions that were transmitted through revelation, but this is still only one possibility out of several. From a cold statistical perspective, it seems that the odds still favor one of the other options.
Without reasons why it is unlikely that the tradition was forged, seemingly there is no “strong picture” here yet. Maybe I would not expect a rational person to categorically violate the Torah, and yes, to be concerned to some extent because that is a real possibility. But it seems that one also should not adopt a fully religious lifestyle.