How do we know anything?

Sigh.

An Intellefundie by the name of Anthony has raised the old chestnut of 'How do we know anything?'. We have discussed this numerous times in the past, but I guess that's never stopped me before, so here we go yet again.

How do we know we really exist? Maybe we are all in the Matrix, or in the imagination of an evil demon. Maybe reality is an illusion. Maybe I'm real, but you are all simulations. How do I know anyone else really has consciousness? Maybe only I have consciousness, but the rest of you are robots? Maybe when I see red, you see blue? Maybe what I experience as pain you experience as an itch? Can I ever really understand what you subjectively feel? And if I did would I be you? If I got cloned into two people, and then you killed the original, would I be dead? What is reality anyway? What's an atom? What's a quark? Is anything actually real? Maybe we are all just information in the mind of God? Or an alien. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Can God commit suicide? What happens when an immovable post gets hit by an unstoppable cannonball? How do we know God isn't just a congenital liar? How come you can wait and wait and wait for a bus and none will come, and then just when you give up and start walking, three will come together?

Well, there's been plenty of philosophical ink spilt on the above subjects, and I've read plenty of it. There's some cute philosophy books (mostly out of the UK) which go through all of these. A fun read. Especially if you're in 12th grade.

But all of this is irrelevant to us.

We assume we exist because we can think, and we also have sensory inputs. We see other people like us, so we assume they are the same. Could this be a false assumption? Yes, it certainly could be. But what possible gain could there be in thinking like this? Let's say this is all a dream. Would we act any differently? Probably not.

People assume they exist, even philosophers, and even radical skeptics. The only people who don't assume they exist are locked up in asylums. And the only people who bring up these subjects are Intellefundies desperate to try and score some points, and divert attention away from their lack of ACTUAL REASONS why their religion is true.

Now, starting with the assumption that we exist, can we please continue?

[I can see it now: The intellefundie response: 'See! All systems start with basic axioms which are unprovable! Mine are the ikkarim!'. Yes, yes. The only thing this proves is how intellectually bankrupt the intellefundies are.]

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Charlie Hall on the conflict between Science and Religion

Intellefundies like to claim that Science does not contradict religion in any way. Here is a typical intellefundie comment on the subject, this one courtesy of Charlie Hall on Cross-Currents:

Science is limited to addressing matters that are amenable to empirical verification, and thus is a potential threat to religion only to the extent that a religion’s basic precepts are empirically verifiable. Science is therefore no threat to Judaism as only one of the Rambam’s 13 principles — the eighth — is even theoretically subject to empirical verification, and a practical verification of even that one is impossible. Judaism also has a long tradition of non-literal interpretation of its sacred texts so even an actual disproof of the most straightforward literal meaning, which of course has happened for parts of Sefer Bereshit, is no challenge to our tradition. As a scientist I have no difficult in reciting, “Ani maamim….”

This is of course wrong, for multiple reasons. The main mistake that Charlie Hall is making is that he is confusing Scientific Knowledge with Scientific Method.

It is true that Scientific Knowledge does not inherently contradict the ikkarim. Most of the ikkarim are about God, or about Nevius, or about the future. There is no Scientific knowledge on these topics, because they are beyond the bounds of science.

However the Scientific Method certainly does make committed belief in the ikkarim quite ludicrous. The Scientific method informs us that the most reliable way to gain information is to follow the evidence, take the most resonable, unbiased, objective conclusion, create testable hypotheses, subject your theories to peer review, and be fully open and willing to change your theories if someone else comes up with a better theory. The ikkarim fulfil none of these conditions.

In addition you have Scientific techniques and guidelines such as Occams Razor and similar. The most reasonable explanation of Judaism, all things considered, is that it is a religion like all the others, and most likely untrue. This is the conclusion you would inevitably reach were you to follow the Scientific Method.

Charlie Hall, being a Scientist, should know that.

But of course Charlie is only capable of 'being Scientific' in the realm of the physical universe and the laboratory. When it comes to religion, his emotions and desires take control of his thought process, and he is no longer capable of 'being Scientific'. Instead, he allows his subjective feelings and desire for his religion to be true to over-ride the obvious fact that all religions are ancient mythologies, which only survive though intense indoctrination of their children from a very young age, Baal Teshuvahs notwithstanding.

Possibly, Charlie will argue that Science works well in the realm of the physical universe, but when it comes to the spiritual universe, Science won't work, and you need something else to find the truth, such as religion, or your soul, or something like that.

I am entirely fine with that argument, as long as you can show that there is such a thing as a 'Spiritual Universe', and more importantly, that religion is a reliable way of discovering the truth about it.

But of course Charlie can't do that, since there is no solid evidence of a spiritual universe, which is exactly why Science can't touch it. And furthermore, all the various religions disagree violently on spiritual truths, and therefore clearly religion isn't even a reliable method of discovering truth about the spiritual universe, never mind the physical universe.

Science says 'Here is a theory, we think it's true, based on all this data. But if you come up with different data and a better theory, we will change'.

Religion says 'Here is what you must believe, based on ancient tradition. If you believe otherwise, you're may be going to hell'.

Since 90% of the planet would trust their lives to 90% of Science (and that's a conservative estimate), and 90% of the planet are passionately convinced that 90% of all religious belief claims are wrong (except of course those of their own sub-sect of their own sect of their own religion), I think it is entirely reasonable to conclude that Science seems spectacularly successful at establishing generally agreed upon provisional 'truth', while in contrast, Religion has been spectacularly unsuccessful at establishing truth. Nobody argues on this.

While this is not inherently a conflict, any reasonable person would conclude that Scientific beliefs are generally reliable, whereas religious beliefs are not, unless you have some exceptionally strong data and evidence. Since almost all the data and evidence I am aware makes the claims of fundamentalist religion, including Orthodox Judaism, look highly unlikely, and since we know that in general religions are false, I see no reason to assume that contra all evidence, this particular religion is true.

As a normal, reasonable person, I have great difficulty in reciting 'Ani Maamin', and as a Scientist, Charlie Hall should kal vechomer have the same problem. Why doesn't he? Because like all Intellifundies (not the fake ones) he's not capable of being either objective or honest when it comes to his religious beliefs.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

If you believe that the Torah is true, then you'll see that the Torah is true!

I wasn't kidding when I posted the top ten reasons why Orthodoxy is most probably not true. But the number one reason, that the people with the answers don't really believe much themselves, might not be the actual number one reason.

Probably the number one reason is that the most sophisticated and highly intelligent apologists always end up with some ridiculous argument that even a child can see has no foundation. The two most striking examples on the internet are RJM and David G. Now, I like David G and RJM. I like them both a lot. But a spade must be called a spade.

Let's start with David G. He's so incredibly circular, I don't know if he's kidding or what. Here's an example from his latest post:

Torah has to be accepted. Its divinity and inerrancy have to be accepted rather than proven. For Torah to work as an educational tool towards the ultimate goal of knowing God and His ways, it has to be accepted fully as divine and inerrant.

How can he write this stuff? How is this any different than the following:

Koran has to be accepted. Its divinity and inerrancy have to be accepted rather than proven. For Koran to work as an educational tool towards the ultimate goal of knowing Allah and His ways, it has to be accepted fully as divine and inerrant.

(David G's probable response: But the Rambam says we can't learn the Koran!)

But wait. There's more:

Rambam in MN 1:35 lists foundational rules or accepted beliefs that all have to accept before embarking on a discovery journey towards God. They start with the existence of God and exclusive worship of only Him followed by belief that God is not physical, He is transcendent, His existence, life, knowledge are all equivocal statements (they are human concepts applied to a non-graspable entity for lack of better words).

Wow, so in order to start a discovery journey towards God, we have to believe God exists! Who woulda thunkit?

Most of the rest of the post is about the same.

As for RJM, all his arguments for the truth of Orthodoxy ultimately boil down to this:

"If you only knew ANE and comparative religion, you would see that TMS is the most probable explanation for what happened."

Unfortunately for RJM, there are thousands of ANE scholars who know ANE and comparative religion (and more besides) very well, but still don't believe TMS is true. I guess they could all be biased, but then so could RJM.

Bottom line: None of these arguments work. And just admitting to the bleeding obvious, that you believe in OJ because you want to believe (as per evanstonjew), is a lot more truthful, respectable and admirable than arguing a bunch of hooey.

I wonder if David G or RJM could agree to the following statement:

"I admit that from a rational objective perspective, Orthodox Judaism does not look true. However I am passionately, emotionally and intellectually committed to Orthodox Judaism, therefore I will use whatever arguments I have to try and make a case for it."

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Evanstonjew nails it

[I coulda written this. I shoulda written this. But I didn't. And evanstonjew did.]

Many people of all religions believe in believing. They want to adopt a religious attitude towards life, not because such and such dogma is true, but because they just want to. It is a desire that cries out for satisfaction like all other desires; not all people, only some people and not necessarily all the time.

This is happening everywhere in the world. Why are Muslim girls putting on scarves? Because they believe in hadath min hashamayim? No...they seek a spirituality, and they give expression to this desire by inscribing it on their bodies.

My intuition is that behind all the bluster many of us at least some of the time want to believe, not believe some propositional content, and not just believe in the evolutionary or utilitarian value of emuna, which is considerable and hardly ever discussed, but simply want to be frum...daven bekavanah, learn as we did when we were in yeshiva, walk in the world with a frum consciousness.

Some people simply have a desire to return to the enchanted world of religion, and in our case Orthodoxy.

This active nekudah in some Jews is in my opinion a good thing, everything else being equal, i.e. it doesn't end in fanaticism, remains progressive and decent in politics and human relations, etc.

As usual propositional truth, dogmas are irrelevant to the cultivation of this feeling.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Why OJ isn't true

Some of my new commenters don't seem to understand. This blog is not about debating whether OJ is true. That debate was lost by the fundies a long time ago. (About 400 years ago to be precise. Badaboom).

There are many reasons why OJ isn't true, but here it is in a nutshell (RD Gold uses this argument in his book on why OJ isn't true):

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If someone you trust tells you he had a flat tire, it's reasonable to believe him, because flat tires are normal and this is a trusted friend. If someone you trust tells you he got abducted by aliens, you don't believe him. If ten thousand people, all independently tell you they saw an alien, maybe there's something to it, but you would still need to seriously investigate.

Many Moslems are convinced that Jews were behind 9/11. Why? Because they saw multiple stories in multiple sources about this. However, all the stories traced back to a singular nasty 'rumor' put out just after 9/11, that was then picked up by all the Islamic outlets. Moslems think they heard the story from multiple sources, but in reality it all traces back to one, unreliable source.

It's the same deal with OJ. Yes, we have 3000 years of people believing in it, but it all traces back to one event, Mattan Torah at Har Sinai. And there is absolutely ZERO corroborating evidence that it ever happened, ZERO. Apart from the Torah of course. Well, sorry fundies, but one document which every expert believes strongly was written hundreds of years later is not good enough evidence for such a fantastic claim.

And make no mistake, TMS is a fantastic claim . Especially with all the questions, but even without any questions at all, it's still a fantastic claim. Even if the text was perfectly reasonable and straightforward with no flaws at all, TMS would STILL be a fantastic claim. And with fantastic claims like that, it always boils down to a simple equation: Which is more likely, the fantastic claim is false and people are mistaken or are lying or have been fooled, or the fantastic claim is actually true?

Well, everyone (even fundies) agree that religions are 99.99999% false. Also, all books are written by men, and no one has ever seen God. So which is more likely, TMS is true, or this is just another false religion? It's not even a kashyeh.

So we have an absolutely extraordinary claim, with zero corroborating evidence, plus plenty of questions and evidence which makes the claim look entirely untrue. It's a no brainer.

So why do people think it's true?

Why are people of all fundamentalist contradictory religions so passionately convinced that their religion is the one true religion? It's all emotional/spiritual of course. Even to this day I have a hard time countering the incredible religious brainwashing I received for most of my life. My family is OJ, my community is OJ, my friends are all OJ. The peer pressure is immense. It's very, very hard to escape from it, especially if you basically had a happy childhood and were always 'into it'. (It's not as hard to escape if you were 'abused' by the system, theologically or otherwise.)

Intellefundies will of course claim corroborating evidence, and then launch into a series of highly debatable and highly subjective arguments, like 'Jewish history is so unique, TMS must be true!' Or 'Torah is so amazing, TMS must be true', or many other arguments which are similar. As the argument of last resort, they will fall back on loyalty and faith.

Trouble is, all these kinds of arguments work equally well for all other religions too. 'The story of Christianity is so unique, Christ must be Lord!' 'The Koran is so amazing, Koran Min haShamayim must be true!' And so on and so on. I have seen these arguments myself.

But here is the clincher, and note this very well:

'Any argument which works for all religions works for NO religion'.

Now, the 'loyalty and faith' argument might very well work from a practical, social or cultural aspect. i.e. you should be loyal to your tribe, for whatever reasons. But it doesn't work for determining truth. Imagine the following scenario:

Kiruv Worker: You should become frum!
5th generation Reform Jew: But I have loyalty and faith to my parents, grandparents and community!

Of course the above story would never happen, because there's no such thing as a 5th generation Reform Jew! Badaboom.

But seriously folks, none of these arguments work to establish truth. The best approach (which makes skeptics crazy), in fact the only approach which even has a snowball's chance in hell of working, is to attack the very foundation of knowledge and truth itself.

That's right. I'm talking PoMo. (gasp)

UPDATE: Ooops! There is one other approach which works well, though it's somewhat juvenile. I'm talking about the 'I don't care approach'. 'I don't care if OJ looks entirely false, I'm gonna believe it anyway!'. Hard to argue against that one, and more people really rely on that argument than you might think.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Is OJ intellectually defensible?

Quite a few of my intellefundie friends argue that while OJ is of course not by any means 'provable', they still hold it is 'intellectually defensible'.

By this I think they mean to argue that believing in OJ is not silly or irrational. This stance is appealing to these types of people for obvious reasons; they are too intellectually savvy to claim that they can prove their religion is the one true religion, and not just because 100% proof isn't possible, but they wouldn't even claim that of all the alternatives, OJ is the most reasonable or likely.

However they are also not fundamentalist enough to proclaim 100% conviction and loyalty to some fundamentalist doctrine which by all accounts is crazy. So, they convince themselves that their position is at least 'intellectually defensible', i.e. coherent, not crazy, not significantly contradicted by any known evidence, and so on.

The intellefundies that I know vary on how they create this 'intellectual defense'.

The more right wing fundies will stick to the ikkarim without fail, and will rely on metaphorical approaches to Breishis to answer questions from Science. These types will generally reject the validity of Biblical Criticism outright, because they have no way of assimilating it into their defense.

However more left wing fundies are even able to address Biblical Criticism. One guy I know says that he has trained himself that if ever Biblical Criticism was proved true (or if he himself came to that conclusion through his own research), it wouldn't matter. He would still believe that the Bible was 100% Divinely inspired, but it was just created and compiled by various people over the centuries.

Personally, I don't believe that OJ is even intellectually defensible.

We know too much about ancient religions, about the incredible bias of religious types, about the powerful hold that religious indoctrination can have on a person, about the formation of ancient myths, about the structure and style of the Old Testament, about ancient archeology and about religious fundamentalism in general to believe that it is in any way defensible. Only religious fundamentalists themselves think that their positions are intellectually defensible, nobody else does.

I found this new book book that makes this point, specifically about OJ. From the description:

"With an engaging manner, a clarity of expression, and a keen sense of humor that make this powerful book a pleasure to read, first-time author R.D. Gold relentlessly dismantles the whole mind-set of the religious fundamentalist. At first glance, it might appear that Gold has the singular purpose of deconstructing the doctrines of Orthodox Judaism (Jewish fundamentalism), but in reality the book develops a compelling argument that applies to all forms of fundamentalist religion. The evangelical belief system is firmly anchored in the same literal reading of the Old Testament that is at the core of Orthodox Jewish doctrine, and indeed would be incomprehensible without it. By pulling up the anchor that is the literal truth of the Torah, Gold sets adrift not only the foundation of Orthodox Judaism, but of Christian fundamentalism as well.

There is a great debate unfolding across the country pitting reason and science against revelation and faith. Bondage of the Mind talks to that vast audience of modern readers who are trying to figure out where they stand on the spectrum of religious belief.

Recognizing that even the most skeptical among us are uncomfortable with the atheist label, Bondage of the Mind develops a powerful argument that our choice is not limited to fundamentalism (I believe all of it) or atheism (I believe none of it).

Bondage of the Mind relentlessly dismantles the doctrines of religious fundamentalism - focusing on Orthodox Judaism (Jewish fundamentalism) -- but its core message is not that religion should be abandoned. Rather, the core message is that religious fundamentalism is an insidious force that must be combated if our hearts and minds are to remain free."

Sounds interesting.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Can loyalty and faith over-ride truth?

Yus has been arguing that although OJ maybe does not look so likely to be true, the fact is he has tremendous loyalty and faith to OJ, and that over-rides any truth issues.

[UPDATE: Just for Deganev - what I mean by this is that even though from a rational objective perspoective OJ doesn't look very true, yus says his tremendous loyalty and faith cause him to still believe with 100% conviction that it is indeed true. I didn't mean to imply that yus agrees it isn't true, but through some bizarre application of loyalty and faith will pretend that it is true, or act as if it was.]

[UPDATE TWO: Yus just tied all his loyalty and faith to the Kuzari argument (in another thread), which has been debunked countless times. Oh well, so much for loyalty and faith. Seems these were mostly code-words to disguise his allegiance to some bogus rational argument.]

Is this a valid argument?

I think it depends. Of course loyalty, and in some instances faith, are good middot to have, and the world would be a poorer place without them. On the other hand, we wouldn't say that about a suicide bomber about to blow up a pizza store, with utmost loyalty to his Mullah, and absolute faith that he is doing the will of Allah.

So, like all things in life, you have to use your sechel.

Is loyalty to an ancient law code, which seems rather immoral in places by modern standards, and which by all available evidence really doesn't look very true; is that kind of loyalty and faith sensible? And I think the obvious answer is that it isn't very sensible. Is it the worst thing in the world? No probably not, though given the recent excesses in multiple Fundamentalist religions, it's pretty damn scary.

The bottom line is this: Would the world be a better place without fundamentalist OJ? And that's a hard question to answer. However I think OJ would be a better place if some part of OJ admitted that a literal TMS just isn't very likely, the ikkarim are ridiculous, and that Orthopraxy is perfectly fine. Oh wait, I just described much of LW MO. Never mind!

[Note: Flowchart was found on the web. It is not my work!]

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

A Guide to Intellefundies

Intellefundies are Intellectual Fundamentalists. Typically Right Wing Modern Orthodox (RWMO) or Left Wing Ultra Orthodox (LWOU), and occasionally even Chassidish or slightly RW UO, these are people who are 100% convinced of their fundamentalist religious views, but are also quite well educated, often having advanced degrees in Theology or Philosophy, and certainly bekiim in all the rational rishonim.

I have a bunch of friends here in my neighborhood who fit this description, and there's quite a few online too. In fact, much of the Avodah forum, and much of the Hirhurim readership probably fancy themselves as Intellectual Fundamentalists.

You might think, how can someone be educated, intelligent, intellectual; yet still believe in the ancient myths of Orthodox religion? I mean, it's easy to understand how some ignorant sheltered yeshivah bochur, or even Godol Hador, is still convinced that 'every man, woman and child knows the world is only 6,000 years old'. But someone with a PhD in Philosophy?! How is that possible?

Well, the well known skeptic Michael Shermer studied this phenomenon, and came to the conclusion that smart people are just as capable as deluding themselves as stupid people. In fact, smart people are often better at deluding themselves, figuring out even more clever 'rationalizations' to support their ridiculous views.

We see this in spades with the Intellectual Fundamentalists, who typically will quote all manner of Philosophical terms (usually those of fundamentalist or medieval philosophers), mostly in order to impress, befuddle and hopefully force their opponents into submission.

However, once you get past all that pseudo-philosophical bluster, you generally find that there's nothing actually backing it up. Intense conversations with these Intellefundies always seem to end up in one of three places, what I will call radical skepticism, spiritual intuition or fundamental axioms.

Let me explain.

Radical Skepticism
I have encountered the Radical Skepticism argument for Orthodox Judaism a few times, most recently today. The argument goes like this:

Skeptic: Prove that OJ is true!
Intellefundie: Ha, prove that anything is true!
Skeptic: Good grief!

Of course one can always be radically skeptical about everything. The old skeptical stance was we could all be brains in a jar, managed by some evil demon. More recently, someone figured out that since one day in the future it's very likely that nano-computers will be powerful enough to simulate whole civilizations, and since the universe's resources are finite, then statistically speaking the number of simulated people that ever will have 'lived' will be exponentially higher than the number of actual people who ever will have lived. This being the case, it is far more likely that any individual (i.e. me and you) are in fact simulations rather than real. This argument has an advantage over the 'brain in the jar' scenario in that it does actually seem quite likely, given the ever increasing power of computers.

But, firstly, nobody actually thinks like that. Secondly, even if you do think like that, you don't live your life like that. You assume that probably you are real, and if you aren't then so what? Things seem basically real, and it would be insane to live your whole life assuming you were actually in a jar. Thirdly, what kind of freaking stupid defense of religion is this anyway?! If we really don't know anything, then we certainly don't know anything about religion. How do we know that Har Sinai wasn't actually just an evil trick by some demented prankster god? Maybe it all actually happened just like the Bible says, but the god of the bible is actually an evil demon, and when you get to Olam Habah after being a tzadik your whole life, he says 'haha, fooled you' and sends you to hell, while the kofrim all get to go to heaven with 72 virgins. Basically, any intelligent non fundamentalist person knows that this line of reasoning is childish.

So much for radical skepticism.

Spiritual Intuition
Spiritual Intuition also comes up fairly frequently, and came up today as well. The argument goes like this:

Skeptic: There's no proof that God exists (or TMS is true etc)
Intellefundie: You can't use normal physical proof for spiritual things! You must use your spiritual side for that. Why should you expect that Science/The Senses is the only path to knowledge? There are other paths too.
Skeptic: Oh yeah? Like what?
Intellefundie: Like spiritual intuition (or chose any other name, it makes no difference what you call this. In reality this is called faith/indoctrination/emotion).
Skeptic: But that's what the Moslems, Christians and many other religions say too. They sense God, or Jesus or Allah with their spiritual side.
Intellefundie: Sure, they all use different names for God, but ultimately it's all the same thing.
Skeptic: But how can you say that? They are all convinced that their God wants entirely different things! Allah wants Moslems to forcibly convert Jews. How can you call that the same spiritual intuition?
Intellefundie: So they sometimes get the details wrong. However I know my spiritual intuition is good.
Skeptic: How do you know that?
Intellefundie: Because I have spiritual intuition of course! (Or faith, or loyalty etc)
Skeptic: Good grief!

Of course there could in theory be alternate paths to knowledge, I have no problem with that idea at all. Maybe jumping up and down while patting your head can cause you to know all sorts of things. The key point of course is that no other path to knowledge has ever been shown to be reliable.

If spiritual intuition (or whatever the heck you want to call it) was in any way reliable, then I would believe it in a second. But of course it isn't, because billions of people all have 'spiritual intuition' about all sorts of contradictory things. And also, there's no actual way of ever verifying that spiritual intuition is reliable, since all the beliefs that people know through spiritual intuition are inherently unverifiable by scientific means, and only verifiable through spiritual intuition, and hence you get completely circular.

At this point the Intellefundie will argue that science is also only verifiable through science, and then you get back to radical skepticism again. A complete waste of time.

Finally, we get to the 'Fundamental Axioms' argument, which is actually only a slight variant of all the tricks outlined above.

Fundamental Axioms
The argument goes like this:

Skeptic: Prove that God exists! (or TMS is true)
Intellefundie: I don't need to prove that. All epistemic systems have fundamental axioms which are unprovable. Mine are God and Torah.
Skeptic: But Science doesn't have any basic unprovable axioms!
Intellefundie: Sure it does! You can't prove that anything is real!
Skeptic: Good grief!

Basically, the 'fundamental axioms' very quickly devolves into radical skepticism. But it's amazing how many times I have heard this line.

I will give a shout out at this point to two types of Intellefundies, one is a Rabbi friend of mine, and one is RJM.

My Orthodox Rabbi friend admits he has no good reasons for faith (though he sometimes argues that it's 'intellectually defensible', whatever that means. He says his faith is personal, purely based on feelings, and he wouldn't ever expect to be able to convince anyone else. In fact, if people come to him with doubts, he may very well counsel them to leave OJ.

RJM takes a totally different approach, and I'm still torn between thinking he's even more insane than the average Intellefundie, or maybe he's actually onto something. RJM is from the Chaitian school of religion (Rabbi Chait in Far Rockaway), who passionately believe that they can actually prove that OJ is true. Another Rabbi friend of mine, an ex-Chaitian, told me that he believes that if you ever were actually able to show a Chaitian that his proofs don't work, the guy would go OTD immediately.

So RJM has all these elaborate arguments showing how Judaism is totally unique, can't be compared to all other religions, and the only rational explanation is that Orthodox Judaism is the one true religion. Personally, I have gone head to head with RJM over the phone, and I think he's probably delusional if he thinks his arguments are strong enough to convince anyone. But I will admit that he makes a very good effort, and I admire him for sticking to his guns and not resorting to the ridiculous arguments outlined above.

Just to round this out, I will recount that I once sat down at length with a well known hard core MO Rabbi to discuss theology. He basically said 'Judaism is plausible, more plausible that many (most?) other religions' and refused to say anything further than that. He even admitted that occam's razor would tell you to be agnostic.

The most amazing thing about the Intellefundies is that they have no problem labeling hard core fundies like the average Chareidi as 'childish, ridiculous, naive' and similar. In fact, they are often quite happy to say that the Gedolim have no clue about Breishis or Science, and that well known Gedolim who hold crazy views on these topics are simply swayed by their religious biases!

So these people are convinced that the world's greatest living Torah scholars are helpless victims of religious bias, while they themselves are fully rational and not biased at all!

Mamash unbelievable.

Finally, here's a good tip if you ever find yourself locked into an argument with an Intellefundie. Take the argument, and see if the same argument works equally well for any other religion. If it does, then you know it doesn't work at all. Simple!

Anyways, you gotta love the Intellefundies, they certainly keep life interesting!

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Biblical Criticism: The Believers Respond

A very interesting discussion on Biblical Criticism ensued on the previous post.

I (and others) argued that if the debate about single vs. multiple authorship was a genuine scholarly debate, then you would find some academics arguing single authorship, and some arguing multiple authorship. Whereas in fact, the only people arguing single authorship are the people who have to hold that, because of their religiously mandated beliefs. In other words, there are no non-fundamentalist academics who hold of single authorship, and that should tell you something. In fact that should tell you everything.

Y Aharon claimed that there are certainly academics who believe in single authorship, and then went on to name a bunch of Chareidi and Modern Orthodox Chumash Rebbes. He also mentioned Benno Jacob, a Reform Rabbi. While it is true that Jacob was not an Orthodox Fundamentalist and held of single authorship, it is also true that Jacob did not believe in Mosaic authorship, so I'm not sure how much help he is in that argument. Anyway, Jacob died in 1945, the field has moved on since then.

I'm still waiting for someone to name a single mainstream modern Bible critic who holds of single human authorship around the year 1200 BCE.

Yus took a different approach, arguing that the changes in style in the Torah are reflective of the changes in Am Yisrael over a period of time, and Hashem adjusting His writing accordingly. While this is an interesting theory, I think it fails, since there is not a smooth transition of writing styles over time, but rather a huge mish mash of contradictions and different styles all through at least the first 4 books, often in the same story. Yes, you certainly can kvetch individual explanations in every case, but that's the whole point. All these kvetches taken together are not that convincing to anyone except people who are constrained to believe in single Divine authorship.

Kibi had the most interesting argument of all. He argued that the Torah is such an amazing work of seeming contradictions, flaws and so on, which then all pans out incredibly when you add Torah Shebaal Peh, that the most reasonable answer of all is that of single Divine authorship. However the academics, being biased against religion, obviously can't hold of this theory, so they are forced to fall back on multiple human authorship, since everyone agrees that single human authorship is truly unlikely. According to this reckoning the Fundamentalists are the least biased of the various sides in this debate, since they are able to accept the obvious answer of single Divine authorship.

What do I say to that? I say you must be delusional to think that's a credible theory. And you wouldn't accept such a theory from another religion. For example, Moslems have a similar argument for KMS (Koran Min Hashamayim). They argue that since the Koran is so amazing, and since Muhammad was illiterate, the most reasonable explanation is that the Koran is Divine.

I'm sure Kibi, Yus and Y Aharon would respond that the Koran is not amazing at all, and the only reason that 1 Billion Moslems think it is is because they are religiously biased.

But I can hear the rebukes of the Aish Hakoran preachers in my ears:

'Just sit and learn Koran for 10 years behasmodoh gedolah. Then you'll see how amazing it is!'

Yep. I probably would. Especially if I had sacrificed a lot to make aliyah to Iran, invested my whole life in my religion, and built my identity around being a Islamistic or Koran-True Moslem. And that's very understandable, because you can't expect people to give up their religion and identity just because it's all based on a bunch of extremely unlikely and completely unverifiable ancient myths. Seriously.

But isn't it possible that the Torah really is amazing, once you learn ganz shas, and that only true Talmedei Chachamim can see that? And that if only the academics could see that too, they would all agree that single Divine authorship was the only credible option?

Yes, it's definitely possible.

But it's also possible that this kind of thinking has been deliberately implanted in our brains by the extraterrestrial civilization of Helatrobus, in order to brainwash and ultimately control the Orthodox Jewish population.

Is Helatrobus real? Well, 3.5 million Scientologists are convinced it is. What, you don't think Scientologists are credible? You kofer, just sit and learn L Ron Hubbard for 10 years behasmodoh gedolah, and then you'll see how true SMS (Scientology Min HaShamayim) is!

OK, OK, but don't you think that TMS is more likely than SMS or KMS?

Yes, I do think that TMS is more likely than SMS or KMS. But then again, I might be biased. Here is a graphic to help explain:



To be fair to my MO intellectual friends though, I will post a graphic to explain their position.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

More Bad Arguments for Religion: RJM

In a previous post, I wrote how all the believers were convincingly thrashed when it came to arguments about religion. But RJM claims he wasn't beaten. But he was, both on the phone, here and on Orthoprax. But we can summarize the main arguments again.

NOTE: I am not talking about First Cause arguments and Medieval or Greek philosophy. RJM is quite a philosophy expert and that's very nice. However medieval philosophy doesn't have much to do with the truth of Orthodox Judaism. What I am talking about here is RJM's Kuzari style argument for why Torah must be from Heaven.

The debate goes something like this:

RJM
It is extremely unlikely that the Torah would have been accepted as Divine by thousands of ancient Israelites if it wasn't true. And it is equally unlikely that it evolved from a small legend into a big one. The most reasonable conclusion is that it's Divine, as described in the Torah itself.

XGH
Of course it's more likely to have developed and evolved by human hands. Saying God wrote it is a fantastic claim, and one that needs plenty of evidence. We have many similar stories of ancient texts being claimed as Divine, yet in all cases we believe they were really man made (the Koran for example). Most likely the Torah is man made too, unless you have good evidence to the contrary. The most likely scenario is that there was some original event, e.g. a volcano (or whatever), and the legends developed from there. The ancient Israelites had many stories, legends and myths (just like all other ancient peoples), and these gradually coalesced into the Torah. Almost every single Bible expert and religious historian (non biased) in the world holds this to be the case. The only people who don't believe this are the people who are religiously forbidden to hold this. Canyou imagine a more extreme version of bias?!

RJM
Firstly, claiming a God written text is not a fantastic claim. It is a perfectly reasonable claim. Secondly, the Torah story is unique, and unlike all the other stories (mass revelation). No way could a mass revelation claim have been accepted as true, unless it really happened. Thirdly, the Torah contains many difficult laws, which would not have been accepted had they not been from God.

XGH
Firstly, this is ludicrous. Are you seriously claiming that a Divinely Written Book is no more amazing than a Human Written Book?

Secondly, the more unique the story of the Torah is, the more your argument completely fails. If the story is totally unique, then we have no data and no experience as to whether such a story is reasonably true or not.

For example, if revelation stories happened frequently, and 9 out of 10 times turned out to be true, then RJM could claim that a revelation is a likely true story. Conversely, if revelation stories happened frequently, and 9 out of 10 times turned out to be false, then I could claim it's most likely false.

However RJM claims that the Torah's mass revelation story is unique, and such a story would have to be true. But how can he know this? If OJ is false, then such a unique story is in fact false. And since the story is so unique, there is simply no data to go on. Are mass revelation stories typically true? Could a mass revelation story simply evolve? We have no idea and no data! It's a singularity, and so the default position is to make the simpler claim, that the book is man made, and the religion evolved, like all other religions and all other supposedly Divine Texts.

And of course this isn't even getting into the fact that there are contradictions, errors, different styles and untrue events in the Torah. yes, you can provide kvetches for all those, but at the end of the day, which is more likely: This fantastic tale is true, despite no evidence, or this is yet another false religious claim, just like a thousand others.

Thirdly, many religions contain difficult laws. Many ancient religions required human sacrifice. If anything, ancient Judaism might have been EASIER than the Canaanite religions. There were no Rabbinic Humras, and you didn't have to sacrifice your children to the Gods. And, even if it was difficult, so what? The Moslems keep many difficult laws, does that prove the Koran is min hashamyim? They were convinced to keep the laws because of the benefits that accrued, as we say in shema every day.

RJM himself agreed to me that religion has a serious credibility problem (His words, not mine), so if he wants to claim that Judaism is the one true religion, he needs to provide some very good reasons why. So far I haven't heard him give any, but I'm more than willing for him to try.

In fact, I'm literally begging him to try.

NOTE: I hope my readers appreciate that I have a lot of respect for RJM, which is PRECISELY why I am challenging him to a debate. I wouldn't bother with someone like TrapperJoe or Daganev for example, it would be a worthless waste of time. But RJM is indeed about the most knowledgeable, well thought out, intelligent and educated debater out there (on the believer side). And I'm not just saying that to butter him up!

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More bad arguments for religion

In the last couple of days some really bad arguments for religion have surfaced yet again. These are the same tired old arguments we went over in 2005. Let’s do some quick chazarah though.

1. The argument from love
The argument from love comes in a few different flavors, but it generally goes something like this: "Can you prove you love your wife? No! So why do I need to prove that God exists?"

2. The argument from faith
This one goes like this: "Everyone believes everything on faith. You skeptics believe in Science, I believe in Chazal. There’s no difference!"

Both these arguments fail miserably. In fact they don't even start.

1. Argument from Love
This fails for a few reasons, depending on the intent of the argument. What does it mean to prove your love? It could mean (a) prove that your love is justified, or (b) prove that you are actually in love, or (c) prove the person you love actually exists.

Let’s consider (a) prove that your love is justified. Well, obviously ‘justified’ love is entirely subjective, and depends what you are looking for. But let’s say you had a well defined list of what you are looking for, for example a caring, intelligent RW MO woman who you find attractive and are compatible with, and you find someone with all those attributes, then it seems reasonable to assume that your love is justified. Of course even the best marriages can falter due to strains and stresses, so to assume that just because you found the woman of your dreams it means you are set for life is foolish. Marriage requires constant work. What any of this has to do with whether God exists is a mystery to me.

Now let’s consider (b) prove that you are in love. Well, it’s impossible to really know what another person is thinking or feeling. A really good actor can always pretend. The news is full of con artists who can fake anything. But assuming an honest person, who is in touch with their emotions, love should be reasonably simple to figure out. You feel a sense of elation when the person is around, you miss them terribly when they are gone, you admire and respect them etc etc. If you feel all those things, then you’re in love. If not, then probably not. Again, I don’t see what any of this has to do with God.

Perhaps the argument means that just like people feel intensely in love even though there’s no way of scientifically measuring that, yet we accept their love feeling, likewise if people believe in intensely in God then we should accept their belief feeling. And of course I do. In exactly the same way I accept that someone who honestly claims to be feeling intensely in love, is in fact feeling intensely in love, likewise someone who claims to be feeling (or thinking) a passionate belief in (or connection to) God, is presumably feeling (or thinking) a passionate belief in (or connection to) God. Of course that says nothing about God, it just tells us that the person believes in God, or feels close to God, or loves God. But then we knew that already! Does being love with something in any way prove that the “something” must exist? Hardly. You could be in love with an imaginary thing.

Imagine if you claimed to love your wife, but were in fact single, and no wife could be found. Would your love prove that your wife exists?! Hardly, but it might prove you are delusional.

2. Argument from faith
This one fails because all faith should be justified, where possible. There must be some reason why you have the faith. Otherwise anyone could just have faith in anything and it would be nuts. Of course all religious people do indeed attempt to justify their faith, usually with an argument about an ancient heritage or unbroken tradition or some such. The only problem is that this justification is pretty poor, since many religions claim the same justification, and many of them contradict each other, so clearly this justification is simply not reliable.

On the other hand, people have faith in Science for good reasons – it works, everyone agrees to it (at least to the proven parts), and there is a good system in place for gaining agreement, for reviewing people’s work, for gaining more knowledge etc etc. Contrast this with religion where the system quite literally stinks (as far as gaining knowledge goes). The beliefs are set in stone, and if you consider other possibilities you are damned to hell. Hardly a fair system conducive to gaining true knowledge!

Believers sometimes argue that we unfairly privilege science over religion. Or they claim that it’s unfair to judge religious beliefs by scientific standards. Or else they claim that there are other methods to knowledge besides science and that it’s unfair to insist that everything must be scientific.

I say, fine! I’m ok with any system of knowledge you want to propose. Tarrot cards, spiritual knowledge, divination, whatever the heck you like! As long as it works reliably, I have no problem with it. The reason I trust Science is not because I intrinsically trust Science and reject everything else , but rather because it works reliably. If it didn’t work reliably, I wouldn’t trust it! And neither would anyone else.

If the science world was full of warring factions of scientists, each of them claiming to have the one true science, and none of it worked reliably (at least as far as we could tell), then nobody would trust science either!

All this is poshut. And is at a level of sophistication (or rather un-sophistication) way, way below where I would like to be. And the people arguing this stuff are supposedly mature adults! Sad, very sad. There probably are some interesting things to debate on this topic, but these are not it.

I think the best that can be said here is that humans have a complex range of emotions, and one of them is spirituality. In the same way we celebrate our love, we should also celebrate our spirituality. Since most people do have a strong feeling that there is “something” out there, it seems legitimate to go with this feeling. I don’t see any valid reason to declare such a feeling to be ‘forbidden’. But I would certainly caution against taking things too far.

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New!: The argument from stupidity

[UPDATE: Turns out that TrapperJoe is 'Yus', some jerk who used to hang out at DBs blog. He wasn't really interested in making any real arguments, just jerking people around. I haven't actually ever seen a skeptic do that, it always seems to be some moronic believer who plays that game. But of course not all religious people are jerks, and not all skeptics are not jerks., just when it comes to debating on the blogs, the religious side always seems to field more jerks. Being charitable, perhaps this is because the smart ones are all learning, or doing something more productive. And by definition, the skeptics tend to be the smarter ones. So it makes sense actually, and should not be seen as reflection on religion as a whole.]

I thought I'd seen all the bad arguments for religion, but this one takes the cake. Trapper Joe is proposing the following argument (I'm paraphrasing):

'It's true that religion rests on unprovable or seemingly untrue faith. However many people have faith in all sorts of unproven or untrue things, e.g. certain aspects of Origin Sciences, or unwarranted faith in Professors or other academics, so my faith is legitimate!

Or, to put it more cynically, as anony writes, 'other (stupid) people have absolute faith in unproven or seemingly incorrect things, so why shouldn't I?' I guess it kinda works. Maybe Trapper Joe should write a kiruv book - 'Permission to be stupid'.

But is there anything actually wrong with TrapperJoe's argument? Well, I think his argument actually does work, but I would have put it differently. I would say that believing in fantasy, especially religious fantasy, is part of the human condition. Possibly the human race will evolve beyond that one day in the future, but for right now, the alternatives are far from being proven, and could even turn out to be worse.

I think the focus needs to be on refining people's religious fantasies, and ensuring that they don't cause any undue harm, rather than trying to make people give up their fantasy.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Fundies get their asses wupped again

....and its a darn shame, because I had high hopes this time.

A Rabbi who quotes Spinoza, an educated man, someone who thinks the Gedolim are simpletons who don't understand peshat in Breishis! Sounds like my kind of guy!

Ultimately though, he failed to deliver the goods. He made a reasonable stab at the Kuzari argument, not bad at all (all things considered). I then countered with a reasonable counter argument, see the post below entitled "Lame Fundamentalist Arguments". I expected some kind of counter to my counter. But what did I get? Absolutely nothing!

There are 250 comments on that post, and not one of them addresses my counter argument! Instead RJM attacks my methodology, my bias, my lack of seriousness, my lack of learning, anything and everything, but nowhere does he address the actual content of the post, except to say it's silly, and he leaves it at that. Not very convincing I'm afraid. And the only thing all this has achieved is to make me realize yet again how absolutely incapable fundamentalists are in admitting to reality.

Millions of people believe passionately in their different (and usually contradictory) religions. True, many of these people never think about their religion very seriously, even the highly intelligent people. But certainly some do. And, given the millions upon millions of religious people in the world, that still leaves you with a very significant number of intelligent people who have questioned their faith very seriously indeed.

Now, we know many of these people have become secular Christians, Moslems and Jews. And no doubt there is quite a large percentage who decided to stick with their faith, for all the usual reasons. However there is a tiny percentage who switched faiths. How many Christian converts to Judaism do you know? A handful? And vice versa? And to Islam? And vice versa? It hardly ever happens. Why is this? Of course there are social issues involved, but for a true truth seeker, they wouldn't matter as much.

Do you honestly think that if you had been brought up religious Christian that you would now be a Rabbi? Or vice versa? Fact is, the statistics plainly show that the vast majority of people brought up in a strong faith remain that way. And of those that don't, the vast majority give up all faith. Clearly, the vast majority of people convinced by religious arguments are the people who believed in it in the first place.

Go to any bookstore. You will find volumes and volumes of Christian apologetics, written by educated and intelligent people, all apparently containing 'convincing' proof that Jesus just must be the Messiah. But RJM dismisses all of these as nonsense! (And he's right of course). But does RJM really think that all these people are fools, and only he has the convincing arguments? Which is more likely, he has a solid argument for religion, or he is yet another fundamentalist convinced by arguments that no rational objective person would ever be convinced by?

We know for a FACT that millions upon millions of otherwise highly intelligent and educated people believe in the biggest nonsense - when it comes to religion. We KNOW this! Every fundamentalist agrees to this! RJM himself holds that 99% of all religions, and consequently 99% of all religious believers, believe in nonsense. We have clear evidence that when it comes to religion, people believe what they want to believe. Its irrefutable! Even the fundamentalists agree! Yet RJM has the hubris to think that he is objective and non biased about his own religion? Unbelievable!

The effects of religious indoctrination are obvious. They're everywhere. From the Muslim suicide bombers, to the devout evangelicals, to Orthodox Jews. All of them, even the highly intelligent ones, are absolutely convinced of the veracity of their own arguments, and absolutely convinced of how nonsensical their opponent's arguments are.

'God couldn't possibly manifest Himself as a man!' exclaims Y Aharon. Does he not realize how ironically non self aware this comment is? Thousands of years of Christian apologetics, written by the most educated, intelligent and spiritual people, yet Y Aharon dismisses it all in an instant. The stupidity of Christianity is readily apparent to him, and to all Orthodox fundamentalists (and to all skeptics of course), but the stupidity of his own beliefs, in mythical floods and genetically altered men? No! Not stupid at all. The hubris is mind boggling.

Of course Y Aharon and RJM will respond as they usually do. Their arguments are convincing, and the only people not convinced are led by their yetzer horah, or are not serious, or are not honest, or some other insult. Their lack of self awareness is quite incredible. Boruch Hashem my own Rabbeim are more intellectually honest (but that doesn't help much either).

I don't attack the fundamentalists for holding the beliefs they hold. I can understand why someone would want to hold onto their beliefs, it's natural. But for intelligent people to think they have convincing arguments for their fundamentalist faith is laughable. Absolutely laughable.

And I have nothing against any of these people personally. Y AHaron I know for a fact is a fine fellow with a choshuv family. I don't know RJM that well, but clearly he is a respected Rabbi and also a fine fellow. Even ed is a good guy! But all these people are so incredibly biased and brainwashed, they can't think straight. Could God possibly want things to be this way? I find it hard to believe He does. Assuming He exists. Which is yet another thing that nobody seems to know for sure. Amazing really. We don't know for sure whether God exists, but we do know for sure that He wrote the Torah. And how does that work exactly? Of course it doesn't. Just like every other argument I have heard.

But what do I know? I'm just dishonest, not open to the truth, guided by my yetzer horah, unscrupulous, not serious, biased towards the skeptics, not spiritual enough, not philosophical enough, not rational enough, not learned enough, too stubborn, too fallacious, too intellectually dishonest and an all round failure at finding the truth. Oh well, I tried.

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

Are talking donkeys silly?

Happy says that any religion which requires you to believe in talking donkeys is just plain silly. Now, I think we all agree that God, if He exists, could certainly make a donkey talk, and vis-a-vis God, creating talking people is no more silly than creating talking donkeys. However God is not the issue here, man is. To a (normal) man, a talking donkey is quite ridiculous.

The Rambam famously re-interprets this whole episode as a dream, but frankly, thats very clowny. Reminds me of Dallas season seven, and that was pretty clowny too. But how about a talking horse? I think that's slightly less silly. Maybe we can re-interpret Bilaams ass as a horse instead. That might help things. The other advantage is that it will spare us all those silly jokes about God talking out of Bilaam's ass.

I recently was sent an email list full of famous names: Akiva Atwood, DBH (the conspiracy nut), Koffer, Ostroff, FKM (Freakin Kiruv Maniac), discussing at length whether Science might be true or not. Such a waste. I find it hard to believe that this is what God wants from us (assuming He exists). And, since God saw fit for whatever reasons to completely hide all evidence of Himself, I find it hard to believe that He cares one way or another as to whether we believe in Him at all. It's all a test? It's all baloney more likely.

The fundamentalists claim they are being reasonable, but any normal, rational and objective person can see they are not. How can they possibly advance the lamest of arguments, and think they are good? It's mamash unbelievable.

Here's what I think is going on:

What comes out of their mouths:

TMS is entirely rational blah blah kuzari proof blah blah critical thought blah blah

What goes on in their brains:

Torah just must be true, I mean it must be! My whole life is predicated on that fact, And my whole family, my whole community, everyone I know. I’ve believed this since childhood, how could it not be true? And my father, and his father and so on for three thousand years! And how many yidden were moser nefesh for this??. If it isn’t true, then I have been living a lie for all these years. How could that be? It just can’t! And not only that, it would mean all the Gedolim have been living a lie, and all the Acharonim, and Rishonim, and oh my gosh, Chazal! And not only living a lie, but Chazal were a part of it! That couldn’t be! All that Torah and Torah learning, all those Mitzvot, the entire enterprise? All false? All a waste of time? No! It just couldn’t be! And anyway, Hashem would never have allowed that to happen. Not to the Yidden! Not to me! No way. Just can’t be. No! Never! Can’t be. Oy, and to even have such thoughts is such a pgam in my emunah. Oy, almost kefirah, such a bad aveirah. I can’t even think like this! Oy.

Update inspired by Little Foxling: And I don't want to go to Gehinom! I don't want to lose my cheleck in Olam Habah! Please Hashem, take these kefiradick thoughts away from me. They distress me so much. Please Hashem, I was only doing this lshem shamayim, only to fight the skeptics. I didn't ever intend to get skeptical thoughts myself. I promise to try and be mechazek myself. I promise! I'll also daven with more kavanah, and learn more. But please remove these doubts and questions from me, please!

And how could I possibly be skeptical? To tell my wife? My kids? My parents? My in-laws? Oy, my chavrusoh? My Rav? My shul? My community? Oy, the shame, the humiliation, how could I possibly do that! No way. It just must be true. What am I thinking?! Of course it's true, of course it's true. Oy, of course of course of course its true. Just take a deep breath. Relax your mind, and think of Torah. Please Hashem help me in this hour of my need. I don't ask for much. Please remove any kefirah doubts and let me be mechazek in my emunah. Your Holy Torah! OF course its all True. The Avos, the Neviim, Chazal, the Rishonim, the Acharonim, the Gedolim (for RJM you can skip the Gedolim, he thinks they're a bunch of simpletons who have it all wrong anyway), my Rabbeim! Oh my gosh, my amazing Rabbeim! Of course they are all right. How could they possiblt be wrong? No, it just can't be. It can't.

What’s funny is that nobody gives a second thought to the fact that 2 billion Christians have it all wrong, and are praying to a god who isn’t there. Or that all the Moslems have it all wrong. All the thousands of Christian and Islamic martyrs who gave up their lives for nothing. All the millions of man hours spent in specifically Christian or Moslem (or Hindu) pursuits all essentially a waste of time. That’s all entirely believable. But the Yidden being wrong? No! That cannot be!

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