[NOTE: This post is talking about Orthodox Judaism as currently defined. It is not talking about the existence of God, or other streams of Judaism, or even other conceptions of 'Orthodoxy' which might be feasible.]
Since this blog is about to imminently close down, I think it's a good time for a recap. We have spent three years debating religion from every conceivable angle, with many, many different people, skeptics and believers alike.
Who won?
It's not even a kashye. It wasn't even close. Sorry, but I think this is beyond debate. The skeptics thrashed the believers to smithereens, time and time and time again. And I know, because I was one of the believers who got well and truly thrashed.
Does this prove that OJ is necessarily false? Not necessarily, but it really doesn't look very good. And that's an understatement. Could this be because the skeptics are a self selecting set of people, who naturally are way more intelligent, whereas the believers tend to be the less smart ones, so naturally they lost the debates? Of course, but 'hoh gufoh'.
Some people will no doubt argue that I'm biased. But I started out on the believers side, and I am still admitting defeat! No doubt some people will argue that because I lost, I switched sides, but a better debater than me would have won. Well, a better debater is yet to appear. If there is one, let him show his face. I didn't win the debates, and neither did anyone else, except perhaps in some very tiny inconsequential battle on a side issue.
This doesn't mean that the skeptics are right about everything. On the contrary, I think they are very wrong about quite a few important things, such as the value of religion. But when it comes to the credibility of fundamentalist religion (as currently understood by the majority of OJ), they trashed it quite decisively.
I can say quite confidently, that given our current knowledge, fundamentalist religion does not look true, and all the so called 'proofs' don't work.
Could things change?
Certainly. But I can say quite confidently, that given our current knowledge, it really doesn't appear that fundamentalist religion will ever look true.
Now, even given the fact it doesn't look very true, could faith in it be justified for some external reason?
Well, this depends on what you think about unjustified faith. This is not an epistemological question. It's an 'ought to' question. A behavioral question. A pragmatic question. Should one hold unjustified beliefs or not?
I think the answer is it depends. A blanket 'ban' on all unjustified beliefs would seem to be too extreme. On the other hand, you really shouldn't go around believing in any old nonsense.
The truth is that all humans feel this instinctively, and it's very rare to find someone who genuinely believes in something whilst simultaneously knowing the belief is entirely unjustified. Almost everyone tries to justify their beliefs, usually with arguments about tradition and such. The only problem is that the arguments are very poor, and don't really work. If the believers fully analyzed their arguments honestly, they would see that.
Is it wrong to justify unjustified beliefs by appealing to bad arguments? Again, this is another 'ought to' argument, and the answer is it depends.
Is there anything left to debate here? Not on this issue. But I think that there's still plenty to discuss with respect to non fundamentalist halachic religion, and science vs. religion, faith vs. reason as a whole, especially in the realm of 'ought to'. Plus, there is some interesting PostModern stuff which we never really got into.
This will all have to wait for another blog.
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