Foundation by Rambam -

I have been having an ongoing debate with Jewish Skeptic about my understanding of the proof for God’s existence. JS claims that Torah min Hashamayim (TMS) is a necessary belief without which God’s existence is not provable. Thus if someone questions TMS, God’s existence falls to the wayside. My position however is quite different. I argue that we have to prove each issue separately and individually. First we have to prove that there is such an entity that we call God without describing Him or appending any attributes to Him. That is done in a simple argument which I have posted several times but will do so again here in this particular context. Isaac Franck expressed it very succinctly:

“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 God...”

Rambam makes that point very clearly in Mishne Torah where he presents Avodah Zara in a historical context where first man knew that there is only a Unique God – implying that it is an obvious conclusion that did not require an evolved human being. Because man could not relate to such an unknowable God, he slowly started to worship what he perceived as God’s agents, the stars and other heavenly bodies, as intermediaries at first and subsequently as gods in their own right. With time the Unique God was forgotten until Avrohom, on his own, concluded again that there is a Unique God using the argument I describe above. In Hilchot Avodah Zara 1:3 Rambam says as follows:
כיון שנגמל איתן זה, התחיל לשוטט בדעתו והוא קטן, ולחשוב ביום ובלילה, והיה תמיה: היאך אפשר שיהיה הגלגל הזה נוהג תמיד, ולא יהיה לו מנהיג; ומי יסבב אותו, לפי שאי אפשר שיסבב את עצמו. ולא היה לו לא מלמד ולא מודיע דבר, אלא מושקע באור כשדים בין עובדי עבודה זרה הטיפשים.
י ואביו ואימו וכל העם עובדים עבודה זרה, והוא היה עובד עימהן. וליבו משוטט ומבין, עד שהשיג דרך האמת, והבין קו הצדק, מדעתו הנכונה; וידע שיש שם אלוה אחד, והוא מנהיג הגלגל, והוא ברא הכול, ואין בכל הנמצא אלוה חוץ ממנו.
יא וידע שכל העם טועים, ודבר שגרם להם לטעות, זה שעובדים את הכוכבים ואת הצורות, עד שאבד האמת מדעתם; ובן ארבעים שנה, הכיר אברהם את בוראו.

Rambam emphasizes that Avrohom arrived at this conclusion without any revelatory support, purely on his own through logical deduction. This God has no attributes yet nor is He described in any way. All we know is that there is such an entity referred to by the philosophers as First Cause. Rambam maintains this throughout his writings explaining the first two commandments, Anochi and Lo Y’heyeh Lecha as non-revelatory but arrived at by the people through their own logical deduction (of course with some coaching by Moshe). (See my earlier post on the subject here - http://yediah.blogspot.com/2006/05/did-it-rain-during-matan-torah.html )

It is only after this idea has been assimilated properly that the other questions can be addressed. Providence, revelation, freedom of choice, man’s relationship to God and all the other existential questions must now be addressed individually. The process is arduous because the God we know exists, is elusive (by definition) and can only be perceived through the result of His actions. Of course those results or effects must be analyzed and seen if they are sensible or not, is this God a good God or not and so on. All we have in this quest are our senses and intelligence. It takes generations building upon the knowledge of past generations, perseverance and discipline of not only the individual but also the public and a lot of time and hard work. The Torah is the guidebook that proposes a way of life that promises to, when observed and understood correctly, to help man to develop in such a way that humankind will eventually know as much as humans can about God. We hopefully will then get a good understanding of our existential puzzle. We Jews have accepted the Torah as our guide at Sinai and we view it as the only guidebook for humankind. There may be individuals, and there were some in history, who can go on a parallel path successfully but we do not know of another successful system for a whole population. The issue of revelation which includes TMS as well as the other theological issues can only be discussed in this context. I propose to address many of these issues in future posts. Some of these I believe I have a good handle on, others I am still a work in progress. Even the ones I think that I have understood I find that every time I revisit or try to write about, I discover new insights.

It is important to keep each issue separate because there is only one goal – Yedias Hashem – and everything else is a tool to help us get there. The goal of Yedias Hashem is predicated on the conviction brought about by deductive logic that God exists. Rambam starts the Yad:
יסוד היסודות ועמוד החכמות, לידע שיש שם מצוי ראשון

That statement is the key to all religion (not only Judaism) - The foundation of all foundations and the supporting pillar of all knowledge is to KNOW that there is a First Cause.