Sorry, another question as I scroll through your substack to see what your about here. This caught my eye, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Maimonides 13 points stood out to me because I hadn't seen those before. I just knew he had a big impact on modern Judaism. I'm learning...
I find it fascinating that Maimonides chose to emphasize God’s ‘unity’ rather than simply God’s ‘oneness.’ In the biblical text, the Shema declares YHWH is echad, a term often taken as singularity or covenantal exclusivity. By reframing this as more of a philosophical unity, Maimonides seems to be importing greek metaphysical assumptions vs. previous views held by the sages. What do you think is going on here?
Also, was creation ex nihilo a mainstream view in Jewish thought before Maimonides, or does it become prominent only later as a response to competing philosophical or religious ideas of his day?
Maimonides affirms the conception of God as absolute unity first advanced by the Greco-Arabic philosophers such as Al Farabi and Ibn Sina, and later adopted by Christian scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas. This is primarily a philosophical association, as Maimonides was a committed Aristotlean. Nevertheless, he also reinterpreted many aspects of traditional Judaism in light of Aristotlean ideas, including a strong emphasis on the unity of God whereever earlier sources discuss the oneness of God.
Creation ex nihilo first appears explicitly in Jewish sources after the encounter with Greco-Arabic philosophy which caused Judaism to frame Jewish theology in philosophical terms. As far as I'm aware, the first to mention it is Saadia Gaon (10th century), but it's also affirmed by other prominent Jewish theologians from the ensuing period such as Bahya Ibn Paquda, Yehuda Halevi (Kuzari), and of course Maimonides.
That’s pretty wild. Up to now I’ve mostly focused on how Platonic thought shaped Christianity, especially through figures like Augustine and Aquinas. Aquinas in particular was deeply influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings are profoundly Neoplatonic.
But now I’m starting to realize just how powerful and far-reaching these Hellenistic philosophical frameworks really were… not just in Christian theology, but in shaping what would become mainstream Judaism as well. This I did not fully understand until you shared those 13 points. Seeing that both streams (Christian and Jewish) later reframed their understanding through a Greco-Arabic lens... really expresses my desire to place the Second Temple period back under the microscope and refocus.
From Sam Harris' substack, posted today. We should observe that if this is what he writes to his Christian readers, Jewish readers of this substack should not think it's fine to make the same arguments.
If a Christian gives the same bad reason for why he believes in Jesus, Mary and God, as you want to give for why you believe in any other god, including but not limited to the God of the Torah, you should think deeply about the ways in which you are deceiving yourself by thinking these thoughts, and try to correct them.
LETTERS TO A CHRISTIAN
I should acknowledge at the outset that we use the term “faith” in a variety of ways. However, most religious people (as well as most atheists) use it to indicate the acceptance of specific religious doctrines without sufficient reason—that prayer can heal the sick, that the historical Jesus was resurrected and will be returning to Earth, that believers will be reunited with their (believing) loved ones after death, etc. Hebrews 11:1 really does give the game away— “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” According the Bible, therefore, faith is some combination of wishful thinking (“the assurance of things hoped for”) and belief without evidence (“the conviction of things not seen”). I am not alone in thinking that this frame of mind is antithetical to reason and that faith-based religion remains in perpetual conflict with science. However, I want to make it clear that I’m not criticizing faith as a positive attitude in the face of uncertainty, of the sort indicated by phrases like, “have faith in yourself.” There’s nothing wrong with that kind of faith.
I see no explanatory power in your words. Anything you say...everything you have said...can be said by the Christian about his faith, and so your position lacks falsifiability.
If your thoughts and feelings about a goblin stealing your lunch can be equally applied to a fairy stealing your lunch, then you ought not favor one hypothesis over the other.
I don't understand your point. Even if Sinai happened Christianity can be true since they claim that now they are the chosen people. The same can be said for Islam.
The fact remains that this does not add credibility to Judaism in the year 2024. All three Abrahamic faiths recognize the Sinai revelation as a historical event, regardless of the validity of such belief. The ease of accepting Sinai over the claims of Jesus or Mohammed does not undermine their respective causes. The issue of Sinai is non-negotiable and irrelevant to the debate on whether Christians or Muslims have become the chosen people as a result of subsequent events.
To objectively evaluate these claims, one might examine texts, analyze history, compare moral frameworks, or consider global influence. However, citing a fact that is well-known and accepted by both parties in a debate is of no use.
For example, consider an analogy where Person A owns a house. Subsequently, Person A and Person B dispute in court whether Person A sold the house to Person B. Person B asserts that the sale occurred, while Person A denies it. The argument that Person A was the original owner does not resolve the current dispute over the sale of the house.
In the same way, acknowledging the revelation at Sinai, no matter how persuasive, does not settle the question of whether Christianity or Islam has replaced Judaism as the chosen religion. This debate must be conducted on its own terms.
And please don't use any twisted ridiculous Talmudic "logic" such as "Chazakah D'meikara" or "Chezkas Mara Kama".
Have you heard of the Miracle of the Sun? I won't link to it here because the Substack triggers are so sensitive that links make them think I'm a spammer, so I'll let you google it. While the rabbis at Discovery Seminary and Aish pretend that no one else claims a mass religious experience, this claim is from October 13, 1917.
Why don't you believe it? Because it's only 30K people or 100K people, instead of 2M people like in the Sinai story? Or because you don't really start from the beginning, taking claims, evaluating them and then when they pass muster, decide to believe in them for good reasons. To accept these miracle stories might be to accept the validity or truth of Catholic claims, and since that runs counter to Jewish claims, most Jews are completely unaware of this miracle story.
The Kuzari principle makes an error in that it confuses claims with evidence. The claim is that the Torah is true and that everything in it is true and that hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of people witnessed the event(s) in question. But that's not evidence...that's the claim. And where's the evidence? Well, the broader claim is that this claim, ala Kuzari principle, IS the evidence. But that's not how evidence works. You can't prove the truth of the Sinai story with a migo.
Rather, the reason why the Kuzari argument is a bad argument is because it's a circular "believe the bible because the bible says to believe the bible."
The bible is not to be trusted and so the bible saying that the bible should be trusted is similarly not to be trusted.
To clarify this notion a bit, and to be utterly precise, people believe because they have been indoctrinated (fancy word for "taught to accept uncritically") to accept the mesorah. In other words, people were taught to accept the mesorah uncritically. The mesorah, if evaluated rigorously, does not withstand scrutiny, and so no one can actually believe based on mesorah. Unless the comment is being made in a self-referential manner, in which the mesorah is that the mesorah should be accepted, and since it's being accepted, this foundational rule is also accepted.
This is another version of the circular reasoning of believing in the Torah because the Torah says that the Torah is true.
Fair enough, but in this context mesorah simply means the tradition you were raised with. If you would like to call that indoctrination that's okay, but I am not looking to use inflammatory language.
If indoctrination just translates as "the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically" and there's no way, as we put it, to accept religion critically, then where is the inflammatory language?
This reminds me of Dawkins when he speaks of ignorance. Most people take being called ignorant as an insult, but it just means that they "don't know." As Dawkins puts it, he's ignorant about American baseball and Polynesian nose-flutes, and most everyone he encounters is ignorant regarding evolution and religion.
Your distinction between rambamist Jews and others is irrelevant, as I am looking for a justification, whichbby definition means a good reason for something. I think even non-rationalist Jews think their beliefs are justified.
Empiricism is very much in line with what I was arguing, namely that we need objective evidence, and empiricism even takes it one step further and discredits logical arguments which are not grounded in empirical observations. Phenomenology is not an epistemological position at all, rather it's focusing on aspects of experience with regards to social sciences such as history sociology and psychology, but it's absolutely not taking a conflicting position about the nature of Truth and objective reality.
When you reference subjectivism I assume you are referring to epistemological subjectivism. If you mean radical relativism based on transcendental idealism, this leads to a breakdown of all logic and human inquiry, which removes the justification for any science even medicine or physics and even the basic tools we use to go about our day-to-day life such as figuring out how to make supper (although one might argue that relative to the one doing the task it has the complete status of Truth).
The claim that truth is inherently subjective is by definition false and indefensible. However, to claim that many of our discoveries of Truth are only seen through our subjective interpretive lenses is a defensible position, which is why the goal of science (or any intellectual task) is to remove these biases. Some would defend the usage of such biases based on a subjectivist philosophy, but this is necessarily limited to ideas where subjectivity plays much more of a role such as meaning aesthetics or others. To defend it as a position of approaching the external world doesn't seem defensible in my mind and there are few philosophers that defend it and even less scientists or scholars. The most I could accept is that it's useful as a placeholder until a better option is available.
If somebody chooses to bury the head into the sand and ignore objective reality and treat their subjective perceptions as the ultimate reality they are fully entitled to do so, and many times it may even be useful in their personal lives. (Pragmatism) However, I still maintain that it is an objective fact that their actual position is irrational.
I'm with Simon here. These sorts of challenges are routinely advanced for ideas that people have been indoctrinated with (non-inflammatory use here) and never advanced for the ideas that they do not already hold.
One can observe countless Christians try to explain to Matt Dillahunty on YouTube how they know Jesus is real, and how they feel him loving them and guiding them, and how do they know that he's real? Because they feel him. And they never considered that "feeling" these things isn't a good path to truth until Matt or another host asks them how they can counter a Muslim who "feels" Allah in his life guiding his marriage and his business deal and they have no good answer. The lack of a good answer is how we know that feelings are not the way to truth and there is objectivity that needs to be engaged here.
Furthermore, no one employs these mental gymnastics to justify nonsense ideas that have no emotional components, like claims of encountering extraterrestrials or Santa or bigfoot.
This should indicate a type of confirmation bias to all those who are interested.
I don't know what you mean by qualia. For someone who says they're not a philosopher, that's a very expensive buzzword.
To say that Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus can all rest assured that their faiths carry them is to say that faith isn't a meaningful path to truth. Judaism ostensibly made up the idea that a Messiah is coming, and Christians took that and ran with it, saying that he already came, but then is also coming again. Muslims...I'm not sure what they do with the Messiah, but they claim that the Torah is a distortion because it switches Ishmael for Isaac and follows the path of Jacob and the 12 tribes when really the focus ought to be Ishmael and his wives and children and their children down through history. Just like Jews don't care much for the descendants of Esau and Ishmael and basically ignore them completely, Islam focuses on Ishmael and says that focusing on the stories of David and Solomon and Isaiah and Ezekiel is barking up the wrong tree.
But from the secular perspective, this tribal infighting is all so petty. Just like the Jews don't care much for the distinction between the Methodists and the Calvinists and the Lutherans, secular perspective sees Christians and Jews and Muslims the same. They all have holy books that are supposedly written or provided by god, but there's no evidence for a god. There's no reason to believe in the tenets of a religion no matter which god one ascribes qualities to, such as omni this or omni that. And stories from the bible do not help at all, any more that one can point to lessons from Harry Potter about respecting certain ideas or people or emphasizing loyalty and honesty over selfishness and cruelty.
Jordan Peterson is a complicated person, like us all. He says many insightful things, but his entire take on religion is just plain unreasonable. I'd recommend his 2 discussion with Sam Harris to fully see how silly his take on things is in regard to religion. Just like everyone else, he'd never make these assertions about Santas and fairies and bigfoot.
claims about angels demons and deities are also limited to regional historical confines where these concepts exist (not specifically that the claimant believed beforehand, but they were definitely aware of the idea, very much like bigfoot). And if you want to say that the people who hadn't heard of say demons just give a different name to it or don't know how to describe, (which is an unfalsifiable claim,) than the same is true for bigfoot, as people have always reported seeing monsters or mysterious creatures.
Additionally, even things that are universal are not necessarily true. All of us have some time in our lives seen faces in inanimate objects such as clouds or trees. It's simply a bias programmed into human cognition. The effects of psychedelics of near death experiences or religious experiences or miracle claims are also effects of human cognitive biases as has been demonstrated by various researchers. (Doesn't mean they are real, but these claims are unreliable)
>>>As to whether one can objectively prove the superiority or truth of one of these systems - I am unsure of that - my own (subjective) opinion is that herein lies the 'bechirah' apportioned to every soul.
I find this to be exceedingly pre-suppositionalist.
The reason why reason ought be valued is because it works. The best way we as a species have found to arrive at the most accurate description of the world is with science. As Steven Pinker wrote, "The traditional causes of belief (faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, hermeneutic parsing of texts and the glow of subjective certainty) are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge."
Why do you assume there are souls? For no reason other than because you have heard there are souls and have accepted this belief and neglected to subject it to rigorous scrutiny.
>>>Yes, but what does works mean? Success as a species? Is this good? why is it good? Does it matter if it is good?
>>>These questions are rhetorical, but I don't mean to be facetious - I only mean to point out that in order to have a fruitful discussion here, we are going to have to go many layers of abstraction deep here - something I don't wish to do.
This seems like special pleading to me.
We want our cars to run and water is so much cheaper than gasoline...should we switch? We want our cereal to be nice and moist and gasoline is cheaper than milk. Why don't we use water in our cars and gasoline in our cereal bowls? Because neither of those work. Oh, they will work for 5 minutes and you can physically pour these liquids into the proposed receptacles, but the cars won't make it to their destinations (and the engines might even break) and you likely won't make it to lunchtime if you had gasoline with your Frosted Flakes.
No one asks questions like you're asking here in regard to gas tanks and cereal bowls. And when it comes to whether or not you need your gallbladder removed or your microwave replaced, ok, the conversations become much more nuanced. Can you just repair a part of the microwave for $150 or do you need an entirely new microwave? What's the diagnosis and what's the prognosis? And how much does a new microwave cost? But the same process of hypothesis, hypothesis testing and conclusions is employed whether we're talking about microwaves or your wi-fi or a leaky roof or whether it's a good idea to have surgery or wash your hands with soap or Gatorade.
When the differences between things matter, they manifest. Now, they may take 50 years to manifest or they may take 5 minutes. You may need to have the surgery before you can determine whether or not the surgery was necessary, and so necessarily, we need to apply the results of 1000 other people's decisions to your situation, and generalizability can be questioned. But reason is how we do it. What works, what doesn't and how do we know it. If we can't tell the difference, maybe there is no difference and maybe there is a difference and we just can't tell yet. But if we can't tell, then why do we think there is a difference. If it's because you "feel" there's a difference, then why do you feel that way? Because a little birdy told you or because your grandmother told you? Or because you read it on the Internet?
2+2=4 is known to be correct because it can be measured and it doesn't matter who does the measuring. If the only one who gets good outcome data from this cream or this vaccine is the company who sells this cream or this vaccine and it can't be independently verified, perhaps these results are not credible.
It appears that your epistemology is lacking. "I have accepted a theory of reality that incorporates metaphysics" is not a good way to get to truth is every idea can be accepted and adhered to in a similar fashion. If we care if what we believe is true, there needs to be a way to ascertain if what we think is true is actually true. And it needs to be better than "it makes me feel good." We do not avoid gasoline in our cereal bowl because it doesn't smell good, because some antibiotic syrups for kids don't smell good, but they still work, so we try to mask the smell with cherry flavoring. Why don't we try to mask gasoline with cherry flavoring? Because it's toxic and you'll die if you consume it. We don't make any of these decisions because of how we think or feel, but on the information we can measure.
I would just like to address the canard that you raised about rational agnosticism leading to Stalin and Hitler.
Ethical theory is a complex topic and I am not here to engage in it right now, however there are many rational theories to ground ethics. Some lead to moral realism, some not, some to relativism, some to absolutism, and some to subjectivism. One simple argument is that I don't want to suffer and I don't want other people to suffer either because I care about them or because not allowing other people to suffer will also protect myself, which is sufficient to reject Stalin or Hitler. (and by the way, your moral objectivism is also complicated, because i'm assuming you're relying on divine command theory, which is from the most difficult moral theories to understand.)
Fascism which is what Hitler espoused or communism which is what Stalin espoused are also moral and political theories. They were based on interpretations about how the world is and how the world should look and that is what prompted them to try to accomplish their evil goals. Maybe if I just reject all narratives then I will also reject Hitler or Stalin's narratives.
I'm doing a bad job explaining, but the point is that your claim that rationalism equals moral nihilism and equals immoral Acts is ludicrous.
Lawrence Kelemen was the first to formally draft the moral argument for god in English for all to access, and he did a terrible job. He also spoke about Hitler and tried to make an argument for why we need a god to give us morals.
1) Just because we don't know what to do without a god doesn't mean that god exists, anymore than just because you want a sandwich doesn't mean that you have a sandwich. But you'll be hungry? But what will you have for lunch? How will you have energy for the rest of the day? These are all such silly questions if what you're trying to do is show that you have a sandwich, and we can all see that so clearly. Need for something doesn't produce its existence.
2) One can ask, "well, if we have morals (which most would agree we do), where did they come from?"
And the answer to that is that we have been evolving (I don't mean this in necessarily in the scientific sense, but more like a synonym for "growing and maturing") over the tens of thousands of years we've been around as a species. We have become more and more concerned, over time, with the welfare of others who are less fortunate and that's a good thing. Kids used to be taken advantage of and women used to be as well. Those with inferior technology were plundered by those with superior technology and enslaved en masse. But we become more enlightened as society matures and we make rules, both those codified in law and those just generally accepted as part of society and its ethical fabric (such as the court of public opinion) and we're not finished yet. We focus more and more on wellbeing and less and less on selfishness and that's a good thing.
3) Let's quit pretending that the Torah portrays good morality, let alone the best morality ever written in a book. Go read the ArtScroll Kiddushin in English to see the discussions of how and when one may sell their daughter into sexual slavery and who gets to decide whether a woman can or cannot do this or that or have a say in this or that. It's abhorrent! Oh...but we don't do that anymore...yes, but why? Not because of a god or his divine instructions. Rather, the rabbis, even 1000 and 500 years ago, saw that certain things were less than moral, and they discontinues much of it. Then with time, more and more was discontinued. But why? Because we as a global civilization saw that this stuff was terrible. And there's still more to go. The idea that women are inferior to men in any way (they're not the same, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be equal under the law). Why can't women make decisions or own land or decide who they marry? What's the deal with levirate marriage? Divorce laws? We still apply much of this and it still populates the minds of most in the Orthodox world. And it's terrible. The only reason the women don't speak up more is because they have been indoctrinated since they were 5 years old to wear a snood when they were the shabbos ima, and so it just makes sense that you can only remarry when your husband permits you to.
>>>My understanding of what you've written here is that you are accusing me of being a hypocrite - in all aspects of life I act as rationally as I can, but when it comes to religion I act on feelings (emotions) - correct me if I am wrong.
I'm glad Simon reminded me prior that discussions are nice, but if the person on the other side thinks you're being a jerk, it shuts down the free flow of discussion (with his response to my use of the word "indoctrinate"), and so I will step back here, even if it's just an issue of word use, and say that I'm not calling you a hypocrite, but that I am pointing to an inconsistency in your line of reasoning. The point I'm making will be essentially the same, but I want to be cordial and kind and I don't want you to feel attacked. While I may think that some ideas are bad, I'm not here saying that you're bad (or dumb). But yes, to follow through on your words above, the idea of special pleading is to make arguments in defense of an invisible, undetectable supernatural being that we do not know exists that you'd never make in defense of, say, an invisible, undetectable monster under the bed. I'm not only saying that no one else would accept such a defense of a monster under the bed, but I'm even saying that you would never accept such a defense from them. And so yes, the inconsistency is glaring when you make arguments for things that would not convince even you. And the only reason you think they are sound is because of confirmation bias. You already accept the existence of a god a priori because of indoctrination, and then come afterward to backfill with bad arguments.|
>>>But in order to articulate my religious convictions would require a lot of discussion, especially since very presupposition that I hold would itself endeavor a lengthy debate
I'm not saying that you don't actually think this, but I am going to say that you are incorrect. There is no good evidence for the supernatural, and it doesn't matter how you personally "feel" about that because if a god exists, he can't very well be contingent upon your actions or how you think about him. Unless you are the one person to whom he revealed himself, you essentially can't matter, and so the notion that anything you feel or think matters here is exactly the critical issue I'm here trying to disabuse you of. Whatever argument is insufficient for demonstrating there's a monster under your bed is also insufficient for demonstrating a god or anything else supernatural. Religious people commonly think it's much more complicated than it really is, and I find these comments of yours to exhibit this common fallacy.
>>>in my view rational agnostics are equally hypocritical in some areas of life
This may be, but you don't get any points toward demonstrating there's a monster under your bed with bad arguments just because other people either try to demonstrate their monsters under their beds with bad arguments, or because they make other irrational decisions or choices in life regarding school choice, spouse choice, community choice or whether they think they win more basketball games when they wear their lucky socks.
>>>Taking rationalism literally to it's logical conclusion leads to worldview's of those such as Peter Singer, or even a Hitler or Stalin
I'd really like to hear more about this. I think you're wrong, but you haven't given sufficient elaboration here for my counter to be anything other than, "no, that's not the case."
There is no agenda in atheism. It's merely saying that there's no monster under the bed. That really is a good analogy. Being more reasonable cannot lead to murder or rape and pillage. Being more scientific doesn't mean that you ignore emotions and it doesn't mean that you are a jerk and justify your actions with DNA and air pressure. The correction for bad scientific thinking is better scientific thinking and the improvement of bad or misguided ethics is better ethics...not pretending that there's a god and that he gave us instructions. And this is especially the case when one claims they get their morals from the bible, which is an atrocious example of morality, given how the Old Testament either actively promotes or at best tacitly approves of slavery, sexual slavery, forced conversion, genocide and a worldview of general misogyny. Any modern interpretation of Orthodox Judaism that doesn't comport with these moral standards is because of our evolved sensitivities over the centuries, rather than a straightforward interpretation of the scriptures. Harris and Dawkins speak extensively about this, and to say that you're not interested...well, isn't this the most important thing to know about? It's not like I'm here recommending you learn more about Bulgarian independence or any other number of topics that would be of narrow interest to some very few. If one thinks that the morality of the Old Testament is anything to speak of as a virtue, one should do their utmost to hear what Dawkins and Harris have to say about it and then go challenge their rabbi, and when that rabbi gives the bad explanation he will, you shouldn't accept it.
>>>agnostics are hypocritically irrational when they choose to care for their own children, or even own bodies, over others, purely due to a chemical urge.
I really have no idea what you are referring to here.
>>>2+2=4 is known to be correct...of course it is correct, but is it objectively real, or a human construct layered upon an indifferent universe?
We can discuss whether math is invented or discovered, but what has that got to do with a monster under your bed? It's really so very irrelevant.
>>>But since I only have access to my own consciousness, and I am unaware of possible unconscious bias in my own consciousness, I remain unsure whether my conviction is subjective or objective.
Again, you're getting lost in metaphysics. Did you find a dragon in your garage when you parked last night? Oh...you did! That's crazy, I didn't even know that dragons existed? Can you demonstrate it? Do you have any evidence at all? Oh, your entire family and community maintain the view that you have a dragon in your garage? Is that because they really saw it, or because they were raised on Uncle Moishy songs all about dragons? Oh, so no one really knows...or do they? Please explain how we can know this, or if it's made up?
Nowhere in that explanation and evidence-producing process will your consciousness come up. Nowhere will you talk about how you find rationality convincing or mention Hitler. You will not talk about you thinking about something that I can't know or me knowing something that you can't imagine. It'll just be you showing me the evidence for the monster or the dragon, and when you can't or don't, no one will believe you, no matter what stories grandma told you or what you read in a book or what the sermon this week was about or how you "feel".
Without discussing the ontological nature of Truth, the epistimological barometer of Truth is justified when the results that we experience confirm the validity of the logic behind it. We can discuss if there's such thing as a priori logic, but regardless there is definitely a posteriori logic. Every time I took two and then another two I got four, and every time I dropped something it fell, and when I speak to someone given certain limitations he understands me. Good in this sense means it functions the way it was hypothesized to function. This is an objective justification for empiricism and reasoning, although we can debate if there are other pathways to truth such as a priori reasoning or rationalism. We can also discuss what the ontological nature of truth is and whether abstract concepts are real or merely mental constructs and so on and so forth but that doesn't destroy basic epistemology. It's really that simple.
Now within that system, do you have the same kind of confirmation for souls? For god? For the torah? Obviously theoretically there can be arguments that can support this conclusion but yehudahs assertion seems to be that these arguments are so obviously weak that people do not believe in them because of justifiable reasons rather because of indoctrination. I don't know if I agree with this fully it's definitely true sometimes but you're just obfuscating the discussion with meaningless arguments.
I never said it's bad, but I do that it is not rational thinking. (The statement rational=good is false.) You seem to think not that it's good, but that to try to break out of it is regressive, as we are bound by the limits of our own minds to remain within our subjective experience and the hindrance of objective thinking is inevitable and should therefore be embraced. There are post-modernist views that argue this point, but you just can't use them when learning science, history, mathematics, or other objective fields. We are capable of objective thought once we learn to think in ways which can for the most part circumvent our biases, which is basically the scientific method in a nutshell.
>>>Within that system, I don't know, because I don't know that system well, with only have a superficial understanding of some of the terms and systems under discussion and am disinclined to investigate it...I feel no intellectual motivation to uncover the depths of this debate and how it relates to other areas of inquiry, and am perfectly comfortable with an instinctive understanding that 2+2=4, despite finding it difficult to actually articulate. I apply the same thought process here. I am no genius, not capable of absorbing the total sum of philosophic learning, and no motivation to either. Within the confines of my own conscious experience, I am satisfied with my conception of reality. This is obviously subjective, possibly corrupted by unconscious bias, but it what it is.
Again...I find this to be nothing but special pleading. We don't need to be experts or even students of formal logic here. We don't need to study P then Q or understand why the contrapositive is logically identical. We just need to discuss openly and honestly about what we believe and why. And to say that 2+2=4 and we can't articulate why that is has got nothing at all to do why one should suppose there is anything supernatural. We have no good evidence that the supernatural exist, and to talk about unmoved movers is really beside the point.
There are many things that can exist, but we're not having a discussion on what may be...rather, on what is. You likely rely on observation, both yours and that of others, in all other realms and disciplines. Fancy words like "ontology" and "epistemology" and "deduction" are helpful when they're helpful, just like medical and legal terminology is helpful when they're helpful but distracting when they're not. I find that people get all philosophical about the meaning of existence when questions like this arise, but it's really much more simple than that. The same reasons you don't ostensibly believe or accept any of the faith claims of Christianity and Islam and Hinduism and Nordic paganism can be applied to Judaism and Judaism is no better at defending itself than these unreasonable positions. And to say this is how one feels or thinks, yes...of course that's the case. Those who have been brought up to not subject their belief system to critical thinking generally do not subject their belief system to analysis.
That's ok for 10 year old still listening to Uncle Moishy. But for adults who care if what they believe in is true, and I suppose those who are on this substack are either interested in that (or interested in being interested in that), one much subject all of their ideas to rigorous scrutiny and not take things on faith, because faith is not a path to truth. As Matt Dillahunty asks, "is there any position that cannot be accepted based on faith?" And since the answer is, "no," we see that faith is not a credible path to truth, together with all the other things I've listed above from Pinker, such as dogma and authority and textual analysis. We need evidence, just like we do for water and milk and gasoline.
>>>I certainly agree with Yehudah, most Orthodox Jews do indeed believe things because they are indoctrinated so. Whether that is objectively good or bad is what I'm touching on. You obviously feel that it is objectively bad, I'm not convinced, and not sure it's possible to be without an infinite regression.
It will certainly depend on one's objectives. I cannot tell you how to live or think. But I can tell you that if you're not interested in evaluating your beliefs for their truth values, you must not be concerned about whether what you believe is true or not. And that's fine for people who want Judaism for its utility (such as if it makes them feel good), but wanting something is not the same as having something. It's nostalgic to think that the way you were raised was the correct one, or at least a correct way. But to ignore reality, to ignore the real and to ignore the best methods we've got to reach these things and think that "but I want this" has any bearing on whether "this" is true or real, that is a terrible loss. A loss of truth and a loss of clarity and a loss of being honest with oneself.
It's no doubt difficult to let go, just like it's difficult to let go of a beloved relative or friend. But not letting go doesn't keep them alive. If Judaism can't defend itself (and it can't), then it doesn't deserve to refer to itself being based on "Moshe emet v'torato emet."
Sorry, another question as I scroll through your substack to see what your about here. This caught my eye, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this. Maimonides 13 points stood out to me because I hadn't seen those before. I just knew he had a big impact on modern Judaism. I'm learning...
I find it fascinating that Maimonides chose to emphasize God’s ‘unity’ rather than simply God’s ‘oneness.’ In the biblical text, the Shema declares YHWH is echad, a term often taken as singularity or covenantal exclusivity. By reframing this as more of a philosophical unity, Maimonides seems to be importing greek metaphysical assumptions vs. previous views held by the sages. What do you think is going on here?
Also, was creation ex nihilo a mainstream view in Jewish thought before Maimonides, or does it become prominent only later as a response to competing philosophical or religious ideas of his day?
Sure, I always welcome feedback :)
Maimonides affirms the conception of God as absolute unity first advanced by the Greco-Arabic philosophers such as Al Farabi and Ibn Sina, and later adopted by Christian scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas. This is primarily a philosophical association, as Maimonides was a committed Aristotlean. Nevertheless, he also reinterpreted many aspects of traditional Judaism in light of Aristotlean ideas, including a strong emphasis on the unity of God whereever earlier sources discuss the oneness of God.
Creation ex nihilo first appears explicitly in Jewish sources after the encounter with Greco-Arabic philosophy which caused Judaism to frame Jewish theology in philosophical terms. As far as I'm aware, the first to mention it is Saadia Gaon (10th century), but it's also affirmed by other prominent Jewish theologians from the ensuing period such as Bahya Ibn Paquda, Yehuda Halevi (Kuzari), and of course Maimonides.
That’s pretty wild. Up to now I’ve mostly focused on how Platonic thought shaped Christianity, especially through figures like Augustine and Aquinas. Aquinas in particular was deeply influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius, whose writings are profoundly Neoplatonic.
But now I’m starting to realize just how powerful and far-reaching these Hellenistic philosophical frameworks really were… not just in Christian theology, but in shaping what would become mainstream Judaism as well. This I did not fully understand until you shared those 13 points. Seeing that both streams (Christian and Jewish) later reframed their understanding through a Greco-Arabic lens... really expresses my desire to place the Second Temple period back under the microscope and refocus.
From Sam Harris' substack, posted today. We should observe that if this is what he writes to his Christian readers, Jewish readers of this substack should not think it's fine to make the same arguments.
If a Christian gives the same bad reason for why he believes in Jesus, Mary and God, as you want to give for why you believe in any other god, including but not limited to the God of the Torah, you should think deeply about the ways in which you are deceiving yourself by thinking these thoughts, and try to correct them.
LETTERS TO A CHRISTIAN
I should acknowledge at the outset that we use the term “faith” in a variety of ways. However, most religious people (as well as most atheists) use it to indicate the acceptance of specific religious doctrines without sufficient reason—that prayer can heal the sick, that the historical Jesus was resurrected and will be returning to Earth, that believers will be reunited with their (believing) loved ones after death, etc. Hebrews 11:1 really does give the game away— “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” According the Bible, therefore, faith is some combination of wishful thinking (“the assurance of things hoped for”) and belief without evidence (“the conviction of things not seen”). I am not alone in thinking that this frame of mind is antithetical to reason and that faith-based religion remains in perpetual conflict with science. However, I want to make it clear that I’m not criticizing faith as a positive attitude in the face of uncertainty, of the sort indicated by phrases like, “have faith in yourself.” There’s nothing wrong with that kind of faith.
I see no explanatory power in your words. Anything you say...everything you have said...can be said by the Christian about his faith, and so your position lacks falsifiability.
If your thoughts and feelings about a goblin stealing your lunch can be equally applied to a fairy stealing your lunch, then you ought not favor one hypothesis over the other.
I don't understand your point. Even if Sinai happened Christianity can be true since they claim that now they are the chosen people. The same can be said for Islam.
The fact remains that this does not add credibility to Judaism in the year 2024. All three Abrahamic faiths recognize the Sinai revelation as a historical event, regardless of the validity of such belief. The ease of accepting Sinai over the claims of Jesus or Mohammed does not undermine their respective causes. The issue of Sinai is non-negotiable and irrelevant to the debate on whether Christians or Muslims have become the chosen people as a result of subsequent events.
To objectively evaluate these claims, one might examine texts, analyze history, compare moral frameworks, or consider global influence. However, citing a fact that is well-known and accepted by both parties in a debate is of no use.
For example, consider an analogy where Person A owns a house. Subsequently, Person A and Person B dispute in court whether Person A sold the house to Person B. Person B asserts that the sale occurred, while Person A denies it. The argument that Person A was the original owner does not resolve the current dispute over the sale of the house.
In the same way, acknowledging the revelation at Sinai, no matter how persuasive, does not settle the question of whether Christianity or Islam has replaced Judaism as the chosen religion. This debate must be conducted on its own terms.
And please don't use any twisted ridiculous Talmudic "logic" such as "Chazakah D'meikara" or "Chezkas Mara Kama".
Have you heard of the Miracle of the Sun? I won't link to it here because the Substack triggers are so sensitive that links make them think I'm a spammer, so I'll let you google it. While the rabbis at Discovery Seminary and Aish pretend that no one else claims a mass religious experience, this claim is from October 13, 1917.
Why don't you believe it? Because it's only 30K people or 100K people, instead of 2M people like in the Sinai story? Or because you don't really start from the beginning, taking claims, evaluating them and then when they pass muster, decide to believe in them for good reasons. To accept these miracle stories might be to accept the validity or truth of Catholic claims, and since that runs counter to Jewish claims, most Jews are completely unaware of this miracle story.
The Kuzari principle makes an error in that it confuses claims with evidence. The claim is that the Torah is true and that everything in it is true and that hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of people witnessed the event(s) in question. But that's not evidence...that's the claim. And where's the evidence? Well, the broader claim is that this claim, ala Kuzari principle, IS the evidence. But that's not how evidence works. You can't prove the truth of the Sinai story with a migo.
Fair point...I will therefore amend my statement.
Rather, the reason why the Kuzari argument is a bad argument is because it's a circular "believe the bible because the bible says to believe the bible."
The bible is not to be trusted and so the bible saying that the bible should be trusted is similarly not to be trusted.
*Most people believe based on Mesorah.*
To clarify this notion a bit, and to be utterly precise, people believe because they have been indoctrinated (fancy word for "taught to accept uncritically") to accept the mesorah. In other words, people were taught to accept the mesorah uncritically. The mesorah, if evaluated rigorously, does not withstand scrutiny, and so no one can actually believe based on mesorah. Unless the comment is being made in a self-referential manner, in which the mesorah is that the mesorah should be accepted, and since it's being accepted, this foundational rule is also accepted.
This is another version of the circular reasoning of believing in the Torah because the Torah says that the Torah is true.
Nice write up!
Fair enough, but in this context mesorah simply means the tradition you were raised with. If you would like to call that indoctrination that's okay, but I am not looking to use inflammatory language.
This only appears to be inflammatory.
If indoctrination just translates as "the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically" and there's no way, as we put it, to accept religion critically, then where is the inflammatory language?
This reminds me of Dawkins when he speaks of ignorance. Most people take being called ignorant as an insult, but it just means that they "don't know." As Dawkins puts it, he's ignorant about American baseball and Polynesian nose-flutes, and most everyone he encounters is ignorant regarding evolution and religion.
I’m really looking forward to this!
Thanks!
Your distinction between rambamist Jews and others is irrelevant, as I am looking for a justification, whichbby definition means a good reason for something. I think even non-rationalist Jews think their beliefs are justified.
Empiricism is very much in line with what I was arguing, namely that we need objective evidence, and empiricism even takes it one step further and discredits logical arguments which are not grounded in empirical observations. Phenomenology is not an epistemological position at all, rather it's focusing on aspects of experience with regards to social sciences such as history sociology and psychology, but it's absolutely not taking a conflicting position about the nature of Truth and objective reality.
When you reference subjectivism I assume you are referring to epistemological subjectivism. If you mean radical relativism based on transcendental idealism, this leads to a breakdown of all logic and human inquiry, which removes the justification for any science even medicine or physics and even the basic tools we use to go about our day-to-day life such as figuring out how to make supper (although one might argue that relative to the one doing the task it has the complete status of Truth).
The claim that truth is inherently subjective is by definition false and indefensible. However, to claim that many of our discoveries of Truth are only seen through our subjective interpretive lenses is a defensible position, which is why the goal of science (or any intellectual task) is to remove these biases. Some would defend the usage of such biases based on a subjectivist philosophy, but this is necessarily limited to ideas where subjectivity plays much more of a role such as meaning aesthetics or others. To defend it as a position of approaching the external world doesn't seem defensible in my mind and there are few philosophers that defend it and even less scientists or scholars. The most I could accept is that it's useful as a placeholder until a better option is available.
If somebody chooses to bury the head into the sand and ignore objective reality and treat their subjective perceptions as the ultimate reality they are fully entitled to do so, and many times it may even be useful in their personal lives. (Pragmatism) However, I still maintain that it is an objective fact that their actual position is irrational.
I find these discussions necessary but tedious.
I'm with Simon here. These sorts of challenges are routinely advanced for ideas that people have been indoctrinated with (non-inflammatory use here) and never advanced for the ideas that they do not already hold.
One can observe countless Christians try to explain to Matt Dillahunty on YouTube how they know Jesus is real, and how they feel him loving them and guiding them, and how do they know that he's real? Because they feel him. And they never considered that "feeling" these things isn't a good path to truth until Matt or another host asks them how they can counter a Muslim who "feels" Allah in his life guiding his marriage and his business deal and they have no good answer. The lack of a good answer is how we know that feelings are not the way to truth and there is objectivity that needs to be engaged here.
Furthermore, no one employs these mental gymnastics to justify nonsense ideas that have no emotional components, like claims of encountering extraterrestrials or Santa or bigfoot.
This should indicate a type of confirmation bias to all those who are interested.
I don't know what you mean by qualia. For someone who says they're not a philosopher, that's a very expensive buzzword.
To say that Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus can all rest assured that their faiths carry them is to say that faith isn't a meaningful path to truth. Judaism ostensibly made up the idea that a Messiah is coming, and Christians took that and ran with it, saying that he already came, but then is also coming again. Muslims...I'm not sure what they do with the Messiah, but they claim that the Torah is a distortion because it switches Ishmael for Isaac and follows the path of Jacob and the 12 tribes when really the focus ought to be Ishmael and his wives and children and their children down through history. Just like Jews don't care much for the descendants of Esau and Ishmael and basically ignore them completely, Islam focuses on Ishmael and says that focusing on the stories of David and Solomon and Isaiah and Ezekiel is barking up the wrong tree.
But from the secular perspective, this tribal infighting is all so petty. Just like the Jews don't care much for the distinction between the Methodists and the Calvinists and the Lutherans, secular perspective sees Christians and Jews and Muslims the same. They all have holy books that are supposedly written or provided by god, but there's no evidence for a god. There's no reason to believe in the tenets of a religion no matter which god one ascribes qualities to, such as omni this or omni that. And stories from the bible do not help at all, any more that one can point to lessons from Harry Potter about respecting certain ideas or people or emphasizing loyalty and honesty over selfishness and cruelty.
Jordan Peterson is a complicated person, like us all. He says many insightful things, but his entire take on religion is just plain unreasonable. I'd recommend his 2 discussion with Sam Harris to fully see how silly his take on things is in regard to religion. Just like everyone else, he'd never make these assertions about Santas and fairies and bigfoot.
claims about angels demons and deities are also limited to regional historical confines where these concepts exist (not specifically that the claimant believed beforehand, but they were definitely aware of the idea, very much like bigfoot). And if you want to say that the people who hadn't heard of say demons just give a different name to it or don't know how to describe, (which is an unfalsifiable claim,) than the same is true for bigfoot, as people have always reported seeing monsters or mysterious creatures.
Additionally, even things that are universal are not necessarily true. All of us have some time in our lives seen faces in inanimate objects such as clouds or trees. It's simply a bias programmed into human cognition. The effects of psychedelics of near death experiences or religious experiences or miracle claims are also effects of human cognitive biases as has been demonstrated by various researchers. (Doesn't mean they are real, but these claims are unreliable)
>>>As to whether one can objectively prove the superiority or truth of one of these systems - I am unsure of that - my own (subjective) opinion is that herein lies the 'bechirah' apportioned to every soul.
I find this to be exceedingly pre-suppositionalist.
The reason why reason ought be valued is because it works. The best way we as a species have found to arrive at the most accurate description of the world is with science. As Steven Pinker wrote, "The traditional causes of belief (faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, hermeneutic parsing of texts and the glow of subjective certainty) are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge."
Why do you assume there are souls? For no reason other than because you have heard there are souls and have accepted this belief and neglected to subject it to rigorous scrutiny.
>>>Yes, but what does works mean? Success as a species? Is this good? why is it good? Does it matter if it is good?
>>>These questions are rhetorical, but I don't mean to be facetious - I only mean to point out that in order to have a fruitful discussion here, we are going to have to go many layers of abstraction deep here - something I don't wish to do.
This seems like special pleading to me.
We want our cars to run and water is so much cheaper than gasoline...should we switch? We want our cereal to be nice and moist and gasoline is cheaper than milk. Why don't we use water in our cars and gasoline in our cereal bowls? Because neither of those work. Oh, they will work for 5 minutes and you can physically pour these liquids into the proposed receptacles, but the cars won't make it to their destinations (and the engines might even break) and you likely won't make it to lunchtime if you had gasoline with your Frosted Flakes.
No one asks questions like you're asking here in regard to gas tanks and cereal bowls. And when it comes to whether or not you need your gallbladder removed or your microwave replaced, ok, the conversations become much more nuanced. Can you just repair a part of the microwave for $150 or do you need an entirely new microwave? What's the diagnosis and what's the prognosis? And how much does a new microwave cost? But the same process of hypothesis, hypothesis testing and conclusions is employed whether we're talking about microwaves or your wi-fi or a leaky roof or whether it's a good idea to have surgery or wash your hands with soap or Gatorade.
When the differences between things matter, they manifest. Now, they may take 50 years to manifest or they may take 5 minutes. You may need to have the surgery before you can determine whether or not the surgery was necessary, and so necessarily, we need to apply the results of 1000 other people's decisions to your situation, and generalizability can be questioned. But reason is how we do it. What works, what doesn't and how do we know it. If we can't tell the difference, maybe there is no difference and maybe there is a difference and we just can't tell yet. But if we can't tell, then why do we think there is a difference. If it's because you "feel" there's a difference, then why do you feel that way? Because a little birdy told you or because your grandmother told you? Or because you read it on the Internet?
2+2=4 is known to be correct because it can be measured and it doesn't matter who does the measuring. If the only one who gets good outcome data from this cream or this vaccine is the company who sells this cream or this vaccine and it can't be independently verified, perhaps these results are not credible.
It appears that your epistemology is lacking. "I have accepted a theory of reality that incorporates metaphysics" is not a good way to get to truth is every idea can be accepted and adhered to in a similar fashion. If we care if what we believe is true, there needs to be a way to ascertain if what we think is true is actually true. And it needs to be better than "it makes me feel good." We do not avoid gasoline in our cereal bowl because it doesn't smell good, because some antibiotic syrups for kids don't smell good, but they still work, so we try to mask the smell with cherry flavoring. Why don't we try to mask gasoline with cherry flavoring? Because it's toxic and you'll die if you consume it. We don't make any of these decisions because of how we think or feel, but on the information we can measure.
I would just like to address the canard that you raised about rational agnosticism leading to Stalin and Hitler.
Ethical theory is a complex topic and I am not here to engage in it right now, however there are many rational theories to ground ethics. Some lead to moral realism, some not, some to relativism, some to absolutism, and some to subjectivism. One simple argument is that I don't want to suffer and I don't want other people to suffer either because I care about them or because not allowing other people to suffer will also protect myself, which is sufficient to reject Stalin or Hitler. (and by the way, your moral objectivism is also complicated, because i'm assuming you're relying on divine command theory, which is from the most difficult moral theories to understand.)
Fascism which is what Hitler espoused or communism which is what Stalin espoused are also moral and political theories. They were based on interpretations about how the world is and how the world should look and that is what prompted them to try to accomplish their evil goals. Maybe if I just reject all narratives then I will also reject Hitler or Stalin's narratives.
I'm doing a bad job explaining, but the point is that your claim that rationalism equals moral nihilism and equals immoral Acts is ludicrous.
Lawrence Kelemen was the first to formally draft the moral argument for god in English for all to access, and he did a terrible job. He also spoke about Hitler and tried to make an argument for why we need a god to give us morals.
1) Just because we don't know what to do without a god doesn't mean that god exists, anymore than just because you want a sandwich doesn't mean that you have a sandwich. But you'll be hungry? But what will you have for lunch? How will you have energy for the rest of the day? These are all such silly questions if what you're trying to do is show that you have a sandwich, and we can all see that so clearly. Need for something doesn't produce its existence.
2) One can ask, "well, if we have morals (which most would agree we do), where did they come from?"
And the answer to that is that we have been evolving (I don't mean this in necessarily in the scientific sense, but more like a synonym for "growing and maturing") over the tens of thousands of years we've been around as a species. We have become more and more concerned, over time, with the welfare of others who are less fortunate and that's a good thing. Kids used to be taken advantage of and women used to be as well. Those with inferior technology were plundered by those with superior technology and enslaved en masse. But we become more enlightened as society matures and we make rules, both those codified in law and those just generally accepted as part of society and its ethical fabric (such as the court of public opinion) and we're not finished yet. We focus more and more on wellbeing and less and less on selfishness and that's a good thing.
3) Let's quit pretending that the Torah portrays good morality, let alone the best morality ever written in a book. Go read the ArtScroll Kiddushin in English to see the discussions of how and when one may sell their daughter into sexual slavery and who gets to decide whether a woman can or cannot do this or that or have a say in this or that. It's abhorrent! Oh...but we don't do that anymore...yes, but why? Not because of a god or his divine instructions. Rather, the rabbis, even 1000 and 500 years ago, saw that certain things were less than moral, and they discontinues much of it. Then with time, more and more was discontinued. But why? Because we as a global civilization saw that this stuff was terrible. And there's still more to go. The idea that women are inferior to men in any way (they're not the same, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be equal under the law). Why can't women make decisions or own land or decide who they marry? What's the deal with levirate marriage? Divorce laws? We still apply much of this and it still populates the minds of most in the Orthodox world. And it's terrible. The only reason the women don't speak up more is because they have been indoctrinated since they were 5 years old to wear a snood when they were the shabbos ima, and so it just makes sense that you can only remarry when your husband permits you to.
>>>My understanding of what you've written here is that you are accusing me of being a hypocrite - in all aspects of life I act as rationally as I can, but when it comes to religion I act on feelings (emotions) - correct me if I am wrong.
I'm glad Simon reminded me prior that discussions are nice, but if the person on the other side thinks you're being a jerk, it shuts down the free flow of discussion (with his response to my use of the word "indoctrinate"), and so I will step back here, even if it's just an issue of word use, and say that I'm not calling you a hypocrite, but that I am pointing to an inconsistency in your line of reasoning. The point I'm making will be essentially the same, but I want to be cordial and kind and I don't want you to feel attacked. While I may think that some ideas are bad, I'm not here saying that you're bad (or dumb). But yes, to follow through on your words above, the idea of special pleading is to make arguments in defense of an invisible, undetectable supernatural being that we do not know exists that you'd never make in defense of, say, an invisible, undetectable monster under the bed. I'm not only saying that no one else would accept such a defense of a monster under the bed, but I'm even saying that you would never accept such a defense from them. And so yes, the inconsistency is glaring when you make arguments for things that would not convince even you. And the only reason you think they are sound is because of confirmation bias. You already accept the existence of a god a priori because of indoctrination, and then come afterward to backfill with bad arguments.|
>>>But in order to articulate my religious convictions would require a lot of discussion, especially since very presupposition that I hold would itself endeavor a lengthy debate
I'm not saying that you don't actually think this, but I am going to say that you are incorrect. There is no good evidence for the supernatural, and it doesn't matter how you personally "feel" about that because if a god exists, he can't very well be contingent upon your actions or how you think about him. Unless you are the one person to whom he revealed himself, you essentially can't matter, and so the notion that anything you feel or think matters here is exactly the critical issue I'm here trying to disabuse you of. Whatever argument is insufficient for demonstrating there's a monster under your bed is also insufficient for demonstrating a god or anything else supernatural. Religious people commonly think it's much more complicated than it really is, and I find these comments of yours to exhibit this common fallacy.
>>>in my view rational agnostics are equally hypocritical in some areas of life
This may be, but you don't get any points toward demonstrating there's a monster under your bed with bad arguments just because other people either try to demonstrate their monsters under their beds with bad arguments, or because they make other irrational decisions or choices in life regarding school choice, spouse choice, community choice or whether they think they win more basketball games when they wear their lucky socks.
>>>Taking rationalism literally to it's logical conclusion leads to worldview's of those such as Peter Singer, or even a Hitler or Stalin
I'd really like to hear more about this. I think you're wrong, but you haven't given sufficient elaboration here for my counter to be anything other than, "no, that's not the case."
There is no agenda in atheism. It's merely saying that there's no monster under the bed. That really is a good analogy. Being more reasonable cannot lead to murder or rape and pillage. Being more scientific doesn't mean that you ignore emotions and it doesn't mean that you are a jerk and justify your actions with DNA and air pressure. The correction for bad scientific thinking is better scientific thinking and the improvement of bad or misguided ethics is better ethics...not pretending that there's a god and that he gave us instructions. And this is especially the case when one claims they get their morals from the bible, which is an atrocious example of morality, given how the Old Testament either actively promotes or at best tacitly approves of slavery, sexual slavery, forced conversion, genocide and a worldview of general misogyny. Any modern interpretation of Orthodox Judaism that doesn't comport with these moral standards is because of our evolved sensitivities over the centuries, rather than a straightforward interpretation of the scriptures. Harris and Dawkins speak extensively about this, and to say that you're not interested...well, isn't this the most important thing to know about? It's not like I'm here recommending you learn more about Bulgarian independence or any other number of topics that would be of narrow interest to some very few. If one thinks that the morality of the Old Testament is anything to speak of as a virtue, one should do their utmost to hear what Dawkins and Harris have to say about it and then go challenge their rabbi, and when that rabbi gives the bad explanation he will, you shouldn't accept it.
>>>agnostics are hypocritically irrational when they choose to care for their own children, or even own bodies, over others, purely due to a chemical urge.
I really have no idea what you are referring to here.
>>>2+2=4 is known to be correct...of course it is correct, but is it objectively real, or a human construct layered upon an indifferent universe?
We can discuss whether math is invented or discovered, but what has that got to do with a monster under your bed? It's really so very irrelevant.
>>>But since I only have access to my own consciousness, and I am unaware of possible unconscious bias in my own consciousness, I remain unsure whether my conviction is subjective or objective.
Again, you're getting lost in metaphysics. Did you find a dragon in your garage when you parked last night? Oh...you did! That's crazy, I didn't even know that dragons existed? Can you demonstrate it? Do you have any evidence at all? Oh, your entire family and community maintain the view that you have a dragon in your garage? Is that because they really saw it, or because they were raised on Uncle Moishy songs all about dragons? Oh, so no one really knows...or do they? Please explain how we can know this, or if it's made up?
Nowhere in that explanation and evidence-producing process will your consciousness come up. Nowhere will you talk about how you find rationality convincing or mention Hitler. You will not talk about you thinking about something that I can't know or me knowing something that you can't imagine. It'll just be you showing me the evidence for the monster or the dragon, and when you can't or don't, no one will believe you, no matter what stories grandma told you or what you read in a book or what the sermon this week was about or how you "feel".
Without discussing the ontological nature of Truth, the epistimological barometer of Truth is justified when the results that we experience confirm the validity of the logic behind it. We can discuss if there's such thing as a priori logic, but regardless there is definitely a posteriori logic. Every time I took two and then another two I got four, and every time I dropped something it fell, and when I speak to someone given certain limitations he understands me. Good in this sense means it functions the way it was hypothesized to function. This is an objective justification for empiricism and reasoning, although we can debate if there are other pathways to truth such as a priori reasoning or rationalism. We can also discuss what the ontological nature of truth is and whether abstract concepts are real or merely mental constructs and so on and so forth but that doesn't destroy basic epistemology. It's really that simple.
Now within that system, do you have the same kind of confirmation for souls? For god? For the torah? Obviously theoretically there can be arguments that can support this conclusion but yehudahs assertion seems to be that these arguments are so obviously weak that people do not believe in them because of justifiable reasons rather because of indoctrination. I don't know if I agree with this fully it's definitely true sometimes but you're just obfuscating the discussion with meaningless arguments.
I never said it's bad, but I do that it is not rational thinking. (The statement rational=good is false.) You seem to think not that it's good, but that to try to break out of it is regressive, as we are bound by the limits of our own minds to remain within our subjective experience and the hindrance of objective thinking is inevitable and should therefore be embraced. There are post-modernist views that argue this point, but you just can't use them when learning science, history, mathematics, or other objective fields. We are capable of objective thought once we learn to think in ways which can for the most part circumvent our biases, which is basically the scientific method in a nutshell.
>>>Within that system, I don't know, because I don't know that system well, with only have a superficial understanding of some of the terms and systems under discussion and am disinclined to investigate it...I feel no intellectual motivation to uncover the depths of this debate and how it relates to other areas of inquiry, and am perfectly comfortable with an instinctive understanding that 2+2=4, despite finding it difficult to actually articulate. I apply the same thought process here. I am no genius, not capable of absorbing the total sum of philosophic learning, and no motivation to either. Within the confines of my own conscious experience, I am satisfied with my conception of reality. This is obviously subjective, possibly corrupted by unconscious bias, but it what it is.
Again...I find this to be nothing but special pleading. We don't need to be experts or even students of formal logic here. We don't need to study P then Q or understand why the contrapositive is logically identical. We just need to discuss openly and honestly about what we believe and why. And to say that 2+2=4 and we can't articulate why that is has got nothing at all to do why one should suppose there is anything supernatural. We have no good evidence that the supernatural exist, and to talk about unmoved movers is really beside the point.
There are many things that can exist, but we're not having a discussion on what may be...rather, on what is. You likely rely on observation, both yours and that of others, in all other realms and disciplines. Fancy words like "ontology" and "epistemology" and "deduction" are helpful when they're helpful, just like medical and legal terminology is helpful when they're helpful but distracting when they're not. I find that people get all philosophical about the meaning of existence when questions like this arise, but it's really much more simple than that. The same reasons you don't ostensibly believe or accept any of the faith claims of Christianity and Islam and Hinduism and Nordic paganism can be applied to Judaism and Judaism is no better at defending itself than these unreasonable positions. And to say this is how one feels or thinks, yes...of course that's the case. Those who have been brought up to not subject their belief system to critical thinking generally do not subject their belief system to analysis.
That's ok for 10 year old still listening to Uncle Moishy. But for adults who care if what they believe in is true, and I suppose those who are on this substack are either interested in that (or interested in being interested in that), one much subject all of their ideas to rigorous scrutiny and not take things on faith, because faith is not a path to truth. As Matt Dillahunty asks, "is there any position that cannot be accepted based on faith?" And since the answer is, "no," we see that faith is not a credible path to truth, together with all the other things I've listed above from Pinker, such as dogma and authority and textual analysis. We need evidence, just like we do for water and milk and gasoline.
>>>I certainly agree with Yehudah, most Orthodox Jews do indeed believe things because they are indoctrinated so. Whether that is objectively good or bad is what I'm touching on. You obviously feel that it is objectively bad, I'm not convinced, and not sure it's possible to be without an infinite regression.
It will certainly depend on one's objectives. I cannot tell you how to live or think. But I can tell you that if you're not interested in evaluating your beliefs for their truth values, you must not be concerned about whether what you believe is true or not. And that's fine for people who want Judaism for its utility (such as if it makes them feel good), but wanting something is not the same as having something. It's nostalgic to think that the way you were raised was the correct one, or at least a correct way. But to ignore reality, to ignore the real and to ignore the best methods we've got to reach these things and think that "but I want this" has any bearing on whether "this" is true or real, that is a terrible loss. A loss of truth and a loss of clarity and a loss of being honest with oneself.
It's no doubt difficult to let go, just like it's difficult to let go of a beloved relative or friend. But not letting go doesn't keep them alive. If Judaism can't defend itself (and it can't), then it doesn't deserve to refer to itself being based on "Moshe emet v'torato emet."