Monday, May 15, 2006

Does God Exist?

After spending the first 70 chapters of the Moreh indoctrinating us in thinking of a transcendental God that is unfathomable, Rambam lays out in chapter 71 his approach to proving God’s existence. (It is a worthwhile read if we want to see how intellectually honest the man was.) He then discusses all the different approaches that philosophers used to prove God’s existence finding fault with every one of them. In the beginning of Book 2 he then lays out his position. It is important to note Rambam’s insistence on God’s transcendence and non-corporeality to the point that he believes it must be taught even to children and the simple. He makes that point very strongly in Moreh 1:35:

That God is incorporeal, that He cannot be compared with His creatures, that He is not subject to external influence; these are things which must be explained to every one according to his capacity, and they must be taught by way of tradition to children and women, to the stupid and ignorant, as they are taught that God is One, that He is eternal, and that He alone is to be worshipped.”.

Before one starts to prove something, one needs to first define what one wants to prove. That is why Rambam insists on transcendence. He does not plan to prove the existence of a personal, involved and easily grasped God. He plans to prove one thing only; that a transcendental God exists, no more or less.

Rambam’s basic approach is that being that God’s essence is unfathomable all we can do is infer His existence from His actions, which is the Universe we live in. Isaac Frank very eloquently and succinctly presents Rambam’s case: (I posted this before)

Without knowing the nature or essence of G-d, we know that G-d exists because we know from our experience that things, contingent things exist. If anything exists, and obviously finite, contingent things, such as you and I, do exist, then it cannot be the case that everything that exists is contingent. To be contingent means that the existence of the contingent thing is contingent upon, depends upon, some other thing or being. But not everything can be dependent on something else, i.e., not everything can have been caused by, or brought into being by, something else. At least one entity must be in existence by itself, independent of anything else, must have come into being (if it did not exist eternally) by itself, must be its own cause, i.e. must exist necessarily not contingently, and its non - existence is inconceivable. This necessarily existent being is what we call G-d... G-d is the absolute existent, to whom existence is so essential as to be His very essence.”

I am aware that there are those who disagree with this approach however I have not found their objections compelling. As we are trying to prove the existence of a transcendental God there can be no empirical evidence other than inference from His actions which is the universe we live in. Understanding the universe is therefore the only way to find God, understand His objectives and emulate them. That is the meaning of Ve’ahavta es Hashem Elokecha, to love God. It is not an ecstatic emotional reaction but a rational one that ends up with awe and trembling before the greatness we glimpse. The emotions are triggered not by our neediness or imagination, but by an intellectual understanding of how great God’s actions are.

ו מַה-גָּדְלוּ מַעֲשֶׂיךָ יְהוָה; מְאֹד, עָמְקוּ מַחְשְׁבֹתֶיךָ.
6 How great are Thy works, O LORD! Thy thoughts are very deep.
ז אִישׁ-בַּעַר, לֹא יֵדָע; וּכְסִיל, לֹא-יָבִין אֶת-זֹאת.
7 A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.

For someone to understand God’s ways, one has to be an intelligent and sensitive person. The Torah sets out to make us into that type of a person. That is why we keep the Mitzvos, why we pray and so on. It is only when we understand God’s ways that He becomes a personal God. We have to personalize Him. The personal God of the masses is just a figment of their imagination. That God is accepted on faith and His existence need not be nor can it be proven.

I am always struck when I see the skeptics discussing God’s existence, questioning it and stating with such self-importance that it is only a matter of faith, that they are right. The God they are looking for does not exist. He may be the God of Christianity but he certainly is not the God of Israel. Our God is unique in all senses – Echad – which translates into transcendental, beyond all thought and experience, which is the ultimate uniqueness. That God is the one we are looking for and He is findable.

כט וּבִקַּשְׁתֶּם מִשָּׁם אֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, וּמָצָאתָ: כִּי תִדְרְשֶׁנּוּ, בְּכָל-לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֶׁךָ.
29 But from there you will seek the LORD thy God; and thou shalt find Him, if thou search after Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

33 comments:

  1. That we conclude G-d exists is not proof that:

    1) He has a special interest in Jews (though the fact we're still here is spooky)
    2) He has a special interest in any of us as individuals, the way a father has for a child
    3) He has a special interest in anything other than, in general, "creating".
    4) That we as humans are the final destination of his "creating", and that our religion is a true reflection of His will.
    5) That "Torah" is in any literal sense His work.

    In fact, on the last score, we've been yelling "the Torah's not in Heaven" for millenia! G-d, it seems, is not even welcome at the negotiating table over what makes us Jewish or not.

    And the result, to my mind, is disastrous.

    I'd be interested your disputes for teh above, because you made statements as though these were things Rambam claims, and I didn't see him claim these things in the quote you provided (they are matters of Faith, I'd suspect Rambam would agree).

    Moving from Rambam to Ramchal, I understand Ramchal (Derech Hashem) to mean that G-d is a sensient Being, conscious of Himself, who created the Universe because "Goodness" cannot be manifested unless there is something to be good to. It is logical then that G-d, as an expresson of His perfect goodness, continues to create an "other" (that'd be us humans) to be good to.

    "Good" is achieved especially well, Ramchal claims, by giving people choices between Evil and Good, and rewarding them for choosing Good. Good and Evil are defined in "Torah", Ramchal argues. That this is so is a matter of Faith.

    Our outlook on G-d is then, in contrast to other faiths, that He is basically good rather than vindictive. Perhaps this is why we have a religion that thinks that Man is also basically good.

    But while we cannot, I think, ascribe to G-d any corruption, we can ascribe this to Man. While basically good, we are corrupted by relations with other humans, and the competition this entails. So, religion, we can conclude, is invented as a means to temper that corruption.

    I would argue that our communities are achieving the opposite with Torah in our day.

    Judaism exists on the nexus that seeks to build a communal infrastructure for tempering corruption, as a means for providing a clear path to allow Man's natural goodness to come to the fore and approach G-d. Problem is, in our generation to reach this orbit given the gravity of the state of our world requires a level of rocket science that most of us cannot muster.

    Can you honestly say this system of mitzvot is working today? Yeah, we can all point to what others are doing. We've got millions of Hareidim who take credit for the thousands who do weekly bikur cholim visits, as proof they are better than chilonim who visit the hospitals but eat crabs. You've got hundreds of gmachim that serve their own communitiies. But chilonim are given no credit for paying the tax monies that allow our children to learn.

    It all looks good on paper. Real good. Utopian, in the classic sense, as long as you know who's in and who's out. You can point to hundreds of people in Kiruv that prove that it works. But what about our car dealers, politicians, businessmen, even our rabbinate? How can you claim that mitzvot serve to make us better when the evidence is at best inconclusive for the vast majority of us? Why should we ascribe to ourselves any credit at all for being in a "Good" religion, when all around us there the light of Torah you refer to has not chased out the darkness?

    Here's where I don't know where to go with this - I believe in G-d, for the reasons Ramchal and Rambam describe. I've grown skeptical that mitzvoth have served to make Jews as a community more sensitive or righteous (except when we are being beaten up on, unfortunately), or that they are His rather than man-made. Does G-d smile on all things done in His name? I think of rock throwing and garbage burning in favor of a man who admitted to killing his son, or in favor of a man who was manhandled by police. I can think of violent demonstrations over the disturbance of graves in construction projects, or to humiliate a family that dressed "modern". "Death to Zionist" posters in a nearby Orthodox neighborhood. Refusing to respect others' feelings during Memorial Day rememberance ceremonies where people stand still in memory of their loved ones. I think of refusal to address legitimate scientific proofs that contradict our accepted mesorah of what the Torah tells us. The list goes on and on. These are people who are INSENSITIVE, not sensitive.

    I think it's possible that this works well on an invidividual level, so I will continue to do good works. But, I don't see the proof in our community's behavior (as opposed to individuals) that mitzvoth have the power to transform us as you've written, making us more sensitive. I don't even see agreement in our communities as to what are mitzvot and what are not b'gadol. Yeah, they can agree on the far more important things like whether you should wear a barsolino (not wearing one makes you suspect in the eyes of others), and it's "in" to believe that there is no religious importance at all to the existence of the STate of Israel, but how many would agree that my $100 contribution should give me a plaque on the wall, when it came more difficult to me than $1,000,000 came to Reuven? Or how many refuse money from Reuven when he earned it dishonestly? How senstive were the millionairs on the scholarship board to me, as filled as they were with Torah, to my inability to pay full fees for my kids? Or how many would refuse to call a man up to Torah that is collecting welfare based on information provided on false pretenses to the government, because he uses that money to survive while learning, thus permitting him not to find a job?

    Any action that we can broadly define as moral, _that we dedicate as worship to G-d_, can achieve the same results on an individual level that Judaism's mitzvot does. THe problem comes to how to do this on a communal level, and how on a communal level we can incentivize "good". And disincentivize "evil". My individual act will be born and die with me.

    Problem is, today's Orthodoxy has grown so anal retentive that it's lost sensitivity, not gained it, through the edicts of Torah. I'm not at all convinced by your assertions. It's just that I'm at a loss as to what the alternative is.

    Only a leader of the scale of "Moshiach" can, I imagine, fix our lowly state.

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  2. This should have been a post! I agree with many of the things you say and I blame it exactly on the approach to judaism you describe based on ramchal and other mystics. It is my humble opinion that unless you put kiyum hamitzvos in the right context, they have very little effect in fact are detrimental. That is why understanding what the goal is, what kind of God we are looking for, what is the meaning of veholachto bidrochov is so important. I hope to get there on this blog and learn and grow on the way.

    Your despair with the community is heartfelt and shared by me. I am totally unimpressed by the growth in Torah. i once posted about it and I see it as the avodah zara of our times. Kiyum hamitzvos has become an aberrant OCD behavior without anything but rirual as proven by the Shemiras Haloshon craze.

    We need to focus on the positive learn and trust that others will follow. Lechazek birkayim kosholos.

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  3. > Our God is unique in all senses – Echad – which translates into transcendental, beyond all thought and experience, which is the ultimate uniqueness. That God is the one we are looking for and He is findable.

    If God is unique, transcendant, and totally incomprehensible to us, as the Rambam says, in what sense is He findable?

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  4. >in what sense is He findable?

    Through his actions namely the universe. The purpose of doing that is to emulate Him. see the last Perek in Moreh.

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  5. That is why a scientist is ahead of a Rabbi. See my earlier post on Gedolim.

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  6. David, your God is one that even a skeptic could love. Yours is the god of moreh nevochim, not the god of the Mishna Torah. It is frankly not the God of orthodox Judaism. Judaism requires a god that cares about mankind, a god that savors the smell of roasting flesh, a god that is jealous of other gods, a god that punishes children for the sins of their fathers, a god that requires us to have two separate dishwashers in our kitchens, two separate beds in our bedrooms, and, if you really want him to like you a lot, two separate sets of tefillin. It is the latter god whose existence the skeptics mock.

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  7. >Yours is the god of moreh nevochim, not the god of the Mishna Torah.

    the God of Mt is the same as the one of MN. MN is like Gemara to the MN.

    >David, your God is one that even a skeptic could love.

    You made my day at least I have accomplished something. I'll make you a deal love my God and look for him. You will be the real Jew then.

    I love skeptics because they will look for God not the complacent ones.

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  8. But not everything can be dependent on something else, i.e., not everything can have been caused by, or brought into being by, something else. At least one entity must be in existence by itself, independent of anything else...

    It's a nice intuition pump, but it doesn't work. If "at least one entity" can exist by itself, why can't many entities exist by themselves? Why can't everything exist by itself?

    Moreover, "causality" is a slippery notion, we know. We live in the 21st century. Science has identified many causal mechanisms. Most natural systems involve the interaction of hundreds or thousands of influences in complex feedback arrangements. It's way too late to make arguments from "everything has a cause, blah blah blah." That is the kindergarten version of science and philosophy. Science and philosophy have grown up.

    If you want to make an argument that will convince anyone, you're going to have to use some modern tools. Use predicate logic, use differential equations, use Bayesian networks. I don't care. Read Herb Simon, read Judea Pearl, read whatever helps you express formally what you want to say.

    I'm trying to be constructive here. I would like to cash out ideas on the unknowability of God as much the next guy... but you just can't do it convincingly without formal tools. Otherwise, it's just blah, blah, blah, and you never know whether you really said anything.

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  9. some Guy, it looks like you are well versed in the mathematics which I am not. So how about translating what I said into mathematical and modern terms

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  10. I was hoping you'd rise to the challenge, being that you seem to be a very smart cookie, and a lot more productive that I am. I've been toying with this for 8 years (not only the unknowable God, but limits of knowledge in general), and not much has come of it except for a lot of headaches. However, I firmly believe that if one can't say something within a formal system (where scope and constraints are well defined), then one never knows whether he's making a strong argument or just appealing to intuition.

    Let me make a suggestion which you can accept or reject at your leisure, since I am not in a place really to be making such suggestions. However, if much of your philosophy of God rests on certain arguments about causality, you may find Pearl's two books interesting as a formal direction to pursue. He is considered a first-rate mind, and his work is now incorporated in all Machine Learning and AI textbooks. His first book was "Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference," and the second was "Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference." They are essentially computer science texts, and require a little background in Probability Theory (which he nevertheless tries to provide in Chapter 1 of "Causality"). You may find them interesting, especially Chapter 10 and the Epilogue of "Causality". Or not. I don't know.

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  11. >the God of Mt is the same as the one of MN. MN is like Gemara to the MN.

    The transcendent God could care less whether we strap leather boxes on our arms. He derives no satisfaction or dissatisfaction from any of our endeavors. For that matter (and much as really pains me to say this), He is equally content with the work of the ovens of Auschwitz and the Satmar matzah bakery. That is not the God of Mishna Torah nor is it the god of orthodoxy. It is the God of Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.

    >I'll make you a deal love my God and look for him. You will be the real Jew then.

    I've been looking for Him and loving Him my whole life. But I have no interest in currying his favor with the meaningless rituals invented by the semi-pagan Hebrew tribes of the 5th century BCE. That, when you get right down to it, is what Mishna Torah is all about.

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  12. >That, when you get right down to it, is what Mishna Torah is all about.

    You are dead wrong. keep on following my posts.

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  13. Some Guy,

    I will try to get to that. What is interesting is when you talk to a mathematecian his perspective is from that angle, the same with a biologist, physicist etc... It would be an intersting project to get people from each area try to expound according to his view.

    In the group I learn with there are people from different disciplines and when I propose my ideas they will translate them into their terms. Unfortunately i cannot repeat them as it is above my expertise.

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  14. See if you can get a copy of the following article- it will help you explain to those non-Maimonideans out there.

    Shubert Spero, “Is the God of Maimonides Truly Unknowable?” in Judaism, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter 1973)

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  15. I will try. Do you have it? If so can you email it?

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  16. I should be able to get it from the University library, if Anonymous doesn't have it.

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  17. Hi. Tried to send the article, but got an error:

    PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 550 You are not allowed to send mail:sv14pub.verizon.net

    Is your "david.guttman@verizon.net" account blocking Gmail or large attachments or something? Maybe I should just try again?

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  18. Some Guy, Try "david@ihwusa.com".

    Thank you.

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  19. "Kiyum hamitzvos has become an aberrant OCD behavior without anything but rirual as proven by the Shemiras Haloshon craze."

    What do you mean by that? Isn't it an attempt to focus on midos etc and not just ritual and chumras.

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  20. >Isn't it an attempt to focus on midos etc and not just ritual and chumras.

    I know what I am saying is controversial and have debated it in our Shul which has instituted Shemiras Haloshon shiur during davening. Loshon Hora is a mida that one develops by not seeing bad things in others, being uncritical and working on one's arrogance, rather than the detail of exactly what is feasible and what is not. It is similar to many many Mitzvos when one becomes so involved in the minutiae one loses sight of the main point of the mitzvah. There are hatefull people out there who are makpid on Loshon Hora and believe me thay find the hallachik loophole to do vicious damage.

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  21. If you can spare the $14, the book below
    is a gem on explaining Maimonides on this topic. It also deals with the differences (and weaknesses) of the positions.

    Burrell, David.
    Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, and Aquinas. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.

    Technician

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  22. Thanks. i have it and read it. i understand this pretty well.

    where i have difficulty is translating the active intellect -sechel hapoel- into contemporary concepts. i have read quite a bit on it and understand from a medieval point of view, but have a hard time with today's thinking. i always try to translate Rambam that way as to me he is a rebbi of religion as opposed to most scholars.

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  23. Here are some pointers that might help activate your agent intellect.

    1] Modern psychology, according to Aristotle, is Pythagorean. Our minds resonate in harmony with an external stimulus.
    For Aristotle, intellect changes the actual substance. The way we view muscle development. Or like a CPU in a computer.

    2] Our major source of knowledge is abstraction, entirely in the mind but based on sense-data. For Hermann Cohen, this is a synthetic a-priori.

    3] Divine knowledge comes as an overflow, a Plotinus causality into the natural order. Moderns do not have final causality, so essential for the Maimonidean proof for God. But we do have theories of inspiration, creativity, and higher forms of knowledge.

    4] We are human only to the extent that we have abstraction. If we only have sense-data then we are still animals. Our intellects are only in potential until we use them.

    5] We also tend not to use the Ibn Sina’s formal cause, where we can transform ourselves from animal to man and from man to prophet. An example from modern psychology of this idea is “the higher self” in transpersonal psychology.

    6] As a follower of Plato, Aristotle accepts disembodied intellects or pure forms. Thee is an opening here in Maimonides for the Kabbalists to re-read formal causes as material causes.


    Technician

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  24. Technician, please e mail me. i want to ask you something.

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  25. Can we do it by email?

    Technician

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  26. I meant:
    Can we do it by comments on the blog?

    Technician

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  27. i'd rather not but it is not important

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  28. "Loshon Hora is a mida that one develops by not seeing bad things in others, being uncritical and working on one's arrogance, rather than the detail of exactly what is feasible and what is not. It is similar to many many Mitzvos when one becomes so involved in the minutiae one loses sight of the main point of the mitzvah. There are hatefull people out there who are makpid on Loshon Hora and believe me thay find the hallachik loophole to do vicious damage."

    I'm not disputing this, but just as with other halachos, isn't the idea that following the halacha trains the mida as well as the converse.

    The issue with loshon hara is that the loophole very often depends on subjective evaluations of toeles etc that are determined by character and subjective intent.

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  29. >I'm not disputing this, but just as with other halachos, isn't the idea that following the halacha trains the mida as well as the converse.

    There is much to be talked about here and I will post about it when I get to Ta'amei hamitzvos.Bekitzur. No if one does halacha with an incorrect attitude it loses its effectiveness.If the mido is not in play how could it help? You know about mitzvas anosho melumodo and all the nevi'im lomo li rov zivcheicehm etc...

    > that are determined by character and subjective intent.


    Exactly, as with all mitzvos!

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  30. "There is much to be talked about here and I will post about it when I get to Ta'amei hamitzvos.Bekitzur. No if one does halacha with an incorrect attitude it loses its effectiveness.If the mido is not in play how could it help? You know about mitzvas anosho melumodo and all the nevi'im lomo li rov zivcheicehm etc..."

    How is loshon hara any different then?

    I would say it's better, becasue if you train yourself not to say bad thigns, or not to listen/accept loshon hara, it's bound to have an effect on how you view people. Also the primary intent is not to cause harm, and you have not done that if you haven't spoken l"h. I think you would agree that for eg "lo tirzach" and don't murder, or lo tinaf and dont commit adultery, even if you don't refrain from murder because of midos, that this is better than if you had murdered, commited adultery etc. And that the act of refraining is character building.
    Why is it different than learning what the halacha considers gezel and refraining? Do you really reject the entire concept of haodom nifal l'fi peulosov, etc?!

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  31. Of course you are right that by controlling even artificially one helps the other person. But the detail that CC goes into and the basis for doind it that he uses with all the mala'chei chabolo etc... is counterproductive.

    On the other hand Odom nifal lfi peolov works if one has that as a tachlis, that he understands that he wants to be nifa'al and uses the peula to help him get there. A ma'aseh Kof will not help one to be nifa'al. I think the whole Shemona perakim is about that.

    See especially shemona perakim chapter 6. The tachlis has to be to improve oneself so that one does not feel the need to say loshon hora, unfortunately that does not work with the CC approach. One is repressed but very angry and brings about much of the negative stuff that we see in our community.

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