Archive for July, 2008

Christian Stance Revisited

July 25, 2008 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , ,

In my post, My Christian Position, I laid out a relatively passive position towards Christianity. After thinking about this, I think I’ve short changed a lot of the voice within me that I want to express and a lot of the voices of people “out there” that I’ve met and that have been an impetus of sorts for me to try to voice my understanding. While there is much to be appreciative for from the Christian world, I’ve met too many people who want to know G-d but question Jesus or Christianity. For me to be overly passive towards Christianity is to ignore a problem that nags a lot of people. My desire is not to confuse or upset anyone (unless that confusion or “upsetness” leads to greater clarity or happiness), but these questions are important.

I still plan on avoiding an all out frontal assault. I do not seek debate, yet I want to lay out some of the reasons why I and my people reject Jesus and Christianity. All of these questions can be answered by Christian apologists, but do these answers resonate with truth? This is a question of what I call internal consistency vs. external consistency. Something is internally consistent only after you accept premises to bring you “into the club.” If a cult leader claims to be a prophet, then certain favors from twelve year old girls could be important to quelling satanic desires in the entire world to help bring the messiah. However, that won’t be externally consistent because prophesy in the Jewish usage of the word is objectively verifiable and not a title for every charismatic pervert.

These questions are not meant to hurt or destroy. I hope they help you wherever you are.

1. If G-d gives the rules in front of the entire nation, establishing His reality and law in front of a couple of million people with miracles, signs, and wonders, how could a fair G-d change the rules without calling everyone back to cancel the original plan with as much fanfare?

2. Where is peace on earth? The Messiah that everyone awaits is the one to usher in a new era. That “ushering in” process is to happen in the Messiah’s life.

3. Where is the oral tradition? The written Torah is nonsensical without it. We’re told to circumsize our sons, but there are no instructions how. We’re told that animals must be slaughtered properly, but again – no instructions. We’re told to place signs on our arm and “totafot” between our eyes, but this isn’t explained. There are questions and seeming contradictions on nearly every verse, yet with no oral companion to explain it people still praise this book. I hear how the atheists and non-believers attack the Bible and I find myself agreeing with them because without an oral tradition, this book does seem to be more than a little strange.

4. Is G-d fickle? There are over 20 examples of G-d telling the Jews in the Five Books that a particular commandment is forever. What does that mean?

5. This is a part ‘B’ of the above question. There are several chapters where G-d talks about the reality that the Jews will stray. There is no mention of a new approach to serving Him. There is not a mention of going so far as to end the era of Torah law. Instead the verses talk of the Jews returning.

6. I also wonder about the role of blind faith in many Christian systems. Why would G-d give you such a marvelous tool as logical thought if at the center of your entire belief system you are required to suspend it. The difference in Jewish theology is subtle yet nearly polar opposite to blind faith.

I do not seek debate because debate is a world of presenting two sides and, for me, there is only one. I’ll answer most any respectful question about where I am and what I’m writing. Debate is an exercise in futility. Discussion and clarity are wonderful – nay G-dly.

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What insulting name should I call atheists?

July 23, 2008 at 12:34 am · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , ,

If I were to really take on atheists head on, without any regard for tact, with a no-holds-barred attitude towards name calling, I’d probably say that they are a bunch of idiots.

I don’t want to get into name calling, so why did I just write that. One. Because I do question the idea that an intelligent and honest person can not believe in G-d – yes I’ll elaborate. And two, I’ve dangled the name calling thing out there because it’s the tactic that atheists seem to recognize.

So . . . two points for this post. 1) Why is atheism idiotic and 2) Why does a guy who doesn’t want to get into name calling allow this seeming exception.

1 – We live on a spinning ball. It’s dangling in space. Life as we know it couldn’t exist if it stopped or if it were going at a different pace. There is another globe going around us (the moon). Its spin creates an entire tidal ecosystem. The two together go at a perfect pace around this really big (until you compare it to other star/suns) ball of fire that doesn’t extinguish. Closer or further away – we’re toast or ice. Seasons, day/night, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, lungs, butterflies, oak trees, and oreos – all balanced in perfect harmony. What a pleasant coincidence! As I suggested in my first post on atheism, I will not take the stance that therefore any particular religion is true. That doesn’t follow. I’m only talking about G-d the Creator.

How can one honestly and intelligently look at this world and claim chance! A couple more questions that have puzzled me: what did bees do before flowers? or the flowers before the bees? There are countless examples of interrelationships between organs within the same organism and organisms within the same system that can not exist without the other. Another puzzle that I haven’t been able to figure out. This is a question for those who enjoy saying/writing things like, “When it became advantageous for a bird to fly, it developed wings.” I don’t know if any serious scientists say such things, but this type of horribly incoherent language is prevalent throughout pseudo scientific articles and other places of supposed intelligence. Exactly how did my great great grandfather – the earlier organism – know that there was sound out there before the ears developed? This type of imaginary approach to life is . . . weird. Step back and think about what you are proposing! Help. Help. Help. I need to devolve to understand this.

2 – The name calling is because I don’t know how else to deal with this. I don’t care how many phD’s you can put in front of me to prove to me that there are intelligent people who believe this. So what. There are intelligent people who believe that there is a G-d; intelligent people who do not; intelligent people who believe that Jesus died for the sins of humanity; intelligent people who do not. That there are intelligent people who believe something doesn’t impress me. Nothing could be more counterintuitive that randomness in such a world. Oh, yes, some things do seem random. What that means is that we have an exceptionally well planned world with some difficulties. Super. Let’s see if we can understand those difficulties But to ignore all of the pattern, intelligence, and interrelationships because of some inconsistencies is . . . you pick the name that I should call it.

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My Christian Position

July 20, 2008 at 11:11 pm · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , ,

A feel a great need to make an official statement about Christianity.

I know what I want to say, but there is a “stuckedness” about this topic. Again, for me, it’s striking a balance.

In order to have a balance, we have to have two (at least) sides. There are some famous voices in the Jewish world who have taken great steps to befriend the Christian world. Michael Medved and Dennis Prager are the two with whom I am most familiar. Their stance is that America is largely a Christian country, and the incredible religious freedoms that we have today are due largely to this religion. Both of these men are highly intelligent and I don’t mean to overly simplify their approaches, but I think this is a fair summary. I like that their message has helped many Jews to realize that not every Christian has as his highest priority the conversion of the Jews. They have helped me and many others to remove the fangs that Jews have in the past associated with Christianity. For this, I think they should be applauded.

However, history isn’t so easily forgotten for many Jews whose approach is keep the Christian at a long arm’s length. Jewish blood has flowed very freely in the name of Jesus – both from the Catholic and the Protestant worlds. In addition to this, there are missionaries who have a passionate desire to bring the “good news” to the Jews. Many Jews resent this.

Before I get to my seemingly balanced position, I have to add an important piece. I believe that Christianity is wrong. Forget about the utilitarian aspect for a second – that it has brought much goodness to many people and that many people’s lives have been vastly improved by Christian living. Every observant Jew believes that it isn’t true. This leads me to my balance. I have now stated that I don’t believe it’s true. I might again state this idea, but I don’t want that to be my task. For that, I’ll direct you to Rabbi Tuvia Singer or Jews for Judaism. This is my way of honoring the appreciation that I have for the freedoms I have without being confrontational towards the group that has been, perhaps, the Divine Messenger to bring these freedoms to me, my family, and my nation. I do believe that every Jew should be familiar with why we don’t believe in Jesus, and I do believe that there will come a time where non-true religions will be revealed as such. I remain open that I’ll have a share in that task, but not here and not for now.

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To Swat or Not to Swat

July 18, 2008 at 8:14 pm · Filed under Parenting ·Tagged , ,

A parent numbering scale would be helpful. In order to get a feel for one’s parenting skill, we could invent a method of scoring. It would be a combination of number of children, ages, number of parents, amounts of fights per day, miles of carpooling per week, etc.

This idea came to me when I realized that I had 61 years of parenting under my belt. I came to this number by adding up all of my kids’ ages (there would be a cap once they reach 18 in this system). At what point can one give parenting advice? I thought that I knew something about this before I had kids. It turns out that a lot of what I thought was right, but forget about it because 1) so much was wrong that it more than outweighs the right and 2) what parent in their right mind wants to listen to some goofball with no kids?

This first comment on parenting is about corporal punishment – aka spanking or potching (although from my computer’s spell checker I see that potch is, unfortunately, not a word). There are loud voices on both sides of this argument. Lo and behold (can you ever say “lo or behold”?), I find myself in the center.

There is a voice that says simply don’t do it. This voice includes some rabbis whose word I value greatly. This voice also includes studies that conclude that corporal punishment is not only cruel but ineffective. This voice is so strong that there are laws being proposed that would outlaw spanking.

On the other side of this topic is the “Spare the Rod” group. Here too there is a rabbinic voice and a “secular” one. The rabbis warn about being too soft. The non-rabbis often point to effective parenting that works. So, we could chalk this up to, “Do what you want and point to your source.”

In a certain sense, you can’t have a middle path here. You do or you don’t. Still, there is a crucial balance that I have done a fairly good job of implementing and I’d like to share it.

Spanking should be two things. First, it should be a last resort. Try reason. Try distraction. Try prevention. Alternative punishments. Stern warnings. You get the point. It can be so easy to swat a child to get the behavior that you want, but you risk getting the behavior in exchange for losing the child. For those in the spanking camp, certain behavior would bring immediate action – running into the street, but in most situations, there is an alternative that will be more effective.

The second condition is the hardest, but the most important. Never with anger. This is your gauge that the spank is for the child’s benefit and not yours. This is the way that, if the spare the rod idea is still relevant today, you will teach correct behavior and not unhealthy anger management.

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War. What is it Good For? Somethin’

July 15, 2008 at 3:40 am · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , , ,

We find several times in the Torah, G-d telling the Israelites to wage war. (The one that I just read is in Numbers 25:16.) This is one of the departure points for non-believers to find an “Aha!” “You see,” goes the argument, “this is their peace loving G-d.”

Let’s be honest. I can hear the argument. Don’t these believers paint a picture of a loving G-d, desirous of all of mankind to enjoy a life of blessing and joy! This same G-d commands war against a nation simply for living on a piece of land. We, of seeming advanced consciousness and civility, can easily recognize that there are more peaceful ways to handle our disputes. Yet, this supposed G-d of the Bible seems to be a war monger. What’s with this?

Let me put my bias on the table. I don’t present this as a proof that G-d wrote the Torah, but I fully admit that this is my starting point. Instead of starting with my American, western, modern sensitivities and poking holes in what seems to be problematic text, my starting point is a Divine and flawless author. It is now my job to understand how this fits with my sensitivities. If there is discord between me and G-d, guess who’s wrong? (There are people who like to point to Abraham arguing with G-d about the destruction of Sodom as proof that G-d is fallible. I’ll add it to my list of topics to blog about, but this is simply not the traditional take on that dialog. Until reform Judaism, there is no discussion about G-d’s mistakes.)

So, back to our topic: how can war be ordered by G-d? And the frightening question that follows is, “Where can this idea lead to?” If I think that G-d orders war, then what’s the difference between me and an Islamic terrorist?

Maybe this is what a friend of mine calls a “guy thing,” but this first question is incredibly self evident to honest men. (True, I don’t like name calling, and I did just imply that if you disagree with me on this that you are dishonest. I’ll try to justify such a passively aggressive attack (which I think I just made less passive aggressive and more direct if you’re keeping track).)

The guy thing is that there is a time to fight. Before you slam the phone down on this post, hear me out. Personally, I have neither been hit nor struck a person with the intent to hurt in my entire adult life (near to 30 years). Bar fights are almost always stupid and wanton acts of violence. (Nor am I fan of world wide wrestling, but that just may be a sign of great evolutionary steps in human development, so I don’t want to be critical.)

The Guy Thing Fight Theory states that pacifism is wrong.

To make as many attempts as possible to settle disputes without violence is honorable and commendable, but there is sometimes a time to fight and even sometimes a time to kill.

The most simple example would be when a person comes to hurt or kill innocent people. It is obvious that we’ll rapidly approach a slippery slope, but there are times when it is not only right to kill, but it would be wrong to avoid killing (think armed killer at kindergarten). Just to stop anyone ready to pounce on me, it is also true that this isn’t really a guy thing. A woman should also know that there is a time to fight or kill; it’s just that I’m a hopelessly traditional guy proud to be taking care of my wife and children. Me big strong man. Woman no fight when big strong man here. Ugh.

Why then does a loving G-d command the Jews to wage war? It is a very sad fact that war is sometimes necessary. We came from Paradise, and we are heading back there, but now . . . we’re stuck here with each other and some of us want to slaughter the others. Part of serving a loving G-d is a readiness to wage war. You go on a preemptive strike when your intelligence is clear that this is the only option. When G-d commanded the Jews to wage war, there was no flaw in the intelligence. The WMD were there.

The difference between this and Radical Islam? G-d’s revelation to the Jews was to an entire nation. His reality was firmly established for each and every one there. There was no dissent amongst the people as to who was the leader and what was the chain of command. It was a direct relationship between G-d and His nation. With Islam (and others waging war in the name of G-d), the people put their faith in violent hate filled men whose positions have never been substantiated publicly by G-d through public revelation. Their followers have the same perverse hate-centered world of death and destruction. The Jews have never waged as much as an arm wrestling match because of our great pain about an insulting cartoon. The differences are . . . distinct.

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Suffering

July 10, 2008 at 1:37 am · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , ,

As if I could cover this in a post on a blog.

Still, let’s look at a couple of angles.

There are atheists who use suffering as their departure from G-d. The argument goes something like this: with children born with congenital diseases, how could there be a G-d? The “popular” Jewish attack is more holocaust centered. “Where was G-d in the Holocaust?” or “After the Holocaust, I can’t believe in G-d.”

I’d like to offer people an option to this problem that I feel is a much healthier and more honest “resolution.” Instead of “How can there be . . .,” let the question become “it’s very difficult for me to understand.” It is much healthier because there is a G-d, and this question is designed to help a person navigate the crests and turns of a sometimes tumultuous life. A life lived with thoughts of G-d is happier and healthier. It is more honest because the G-d that I refer to is infinite, and it is a bit dishonest to presume that His finite and imperfect creations can fathom His ways.

Quickly. Get away from this. It’s sounding canned and preachy. Truly, I have no desire to embody either of those terrible and usually inane adjectives.

The bigger point that I want to explore a bit is how I frame suffering in my life.

Point one: suffering is not bad. It is most certainly bitter, and it most usually difficult. It is not bad. To inflict suffering upon another is usually bad, for that is a moral failing in the inflicter. To suffer, however, is to experience unpleasantness, often extreme. But that’s what it is. Not more.

I understand a natural response is to tell me about some terrible level of suffering that I don’t understand. “How can you say ‘not more’ when I lost a child in a horrible accident!” I don’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. I consider myself to be a very empathetic person. I just mean simply to help properly define the term. It is not bad. It doesn’t mean, either, that I believe that suffering is good. No. Good and bad are moral terms. Our morality is found in the realm of how we relate to suffering. A reaction to suffering could be good or it could be bad.

If we climb into the nitty gritty of this, we could ask about G-d’s morality for bringing suffering. If I torture a person causing them undue suffering than I am bad, but if G-d does the same, than He is not? Why does G-d get off so easy? Or would I suggest instead that suffering is good, seeing as how it comes from G-d?

The final point for this post will help to address “G-d’s morality” as well as give what I would consider to be the most crucial component to understanding this. I do not offer this as a proof, and I’m fully aware that it is part of a belief system whose validity I am not currently establishing as true. That said, I believe with a complete faith that there is what Jews call “The World to Come.”

This world is many things, but for the needs of this post, it is a place where the unfair is made straight. That which we perceive as crooked in this world is understood and “corrected.” It lasts forever. There, the suffering will make sense. There is an analogy that helps to explain this well. (I have dear friends who are skeptical of the goodness of inoculations for children. If this is you, please assume for the sake of the analogy that they are clearly good.)

A mother has to take her two year old to the doctor for his shots. They are necessary, and they may very well help this child avoid getting any number of horrendous or deadly diseases. It is a great act of kindness for this mother to bring her precious son to the doctor for the sake of having the child’s skin pierced by several needles in order to inject the child with various chemicals. The child will cry, perhaps scream. There may even be welts and other allergic reactions. If you could ask the child whether they wanted to experience this pain, they would howl with delight at such a stupid question. There is little in the world that they would prefer to do than to avoid this shot. The mother knows this. Yet, she gets into her car with her baby carefully strapped into a car seat. She may even listen to classical music on the way to the doctor. Is she cruel? The analogy is clear.

G-d brings us through life with lessons for each of us to learn. We judge Him and His plans with the great and advanced intellect of an infant. Just as the infant simply doesn’t have the tools to understand disease and future possibility of contracting these illnesses, we don’t possess the vessels to understand all of the calculations of where we’ve been, where we are going and what we need to do along the way.

Suffering in this context is not understood. My goal is not to understand suffering. Rather, to frame its place in life. We can’t fathom G-d’s mind. We can, however, learn to trust Him. A mentally stable and good mother would never plan on bringing harm to her child if not for the child’s own good. Still, sometimes she does things with great intention and planning that causes great pain to this object of her undying love and affection. Suffering is not bad. It is just bitter.

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And the Rules (Part II)

July 8, 2008 at 1:17 am · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Part I of this post is where we started down the path of considering the power of miracles (yes, yes, if they exist Mr. Skeptic!).

When we kick all of those factors into gear, we get a very strong challenge to our thoughts of the Jews coming out of Egypt. Here it goes:

The Torah claims (and for 3000 years no Jews denied) that the miracles of the Exodus included 2 – 3 million people (this is a huge variance – it’s based on the Torah’s claim of 600,000 military aged men). The miracles lasted for over forty years! These messages of G-d revelation were crucial to the daily lives of the Jewish nation, and we were left with physical confirmations of these miracles for subsequent generations.

Each of these contains a “Wow Factor” that deserves its own paragraph, page, chapter, or book. I’ll give them each a sentence or two, which just may lead into a paragraph for your reading ease and visual comfort. As we expand each idea, it would do us well to consider these implications. To go from one person to two people, the believability more than doubles. Each person we add to the count of people present to see and experience a miracle, the more powerful it becomes, and the more near to impossible does the ability to deny it become.

A miracle that lasts for a full day would shape a person’s life forever. The Torah claims that the Jews lived in the desert for forty years, eating manna from heaven and drinking water that sprang from a rock and traveled with them throughout their sojourn. Their clothes didn’t wear out. To experience one miracle for one minute would likely change your life. They lived in a world of constant and total miracle for approximately 21,024,000 minutes.

The skeptic’s question at this point is simply, “Who says that the Torah is valid?”

I’d like to address this topic more fully later, but let me throw out a thought or two to chew on for now.

Once you have a claim of such an awesome magnitude, – and a claim of 2+ million people living in a constant state of “suspended reality” for 40 years is seriously awesome magnitude – you have to consider how such a claim could have sneaked into the collective knowledge of a people. Where was the generation that first believed this? What was the generation before them believing? Who would believe a claim that includes, “Your parents experienced this,” if their parents deny this? The Torah life is centered not around the places of worship, nor even the study halls. These institutions are crucial to our people, but the most important institution in the Jewish people is the family. Passover centers around the Jewish table, where the father tells his children about these great miracles. That part is not a new invention. It’s written in the Torah. How did this get past the collective conscience gatekeeper?!?

Please post with questions or attacks (friendly and polite, of course). Challenge this if you can. I’d like to hear a plausible answer to this. I don’t seek blind faith. So many people respond, “Well, when it comes to religion, it just comes down to faith.” This is an interesting idea, but it’s not true. The way that this has been expressed to me is really a substitute for, “You just have to believe because it can’t start from the intellect.” This is not the approach that I try to live. It is not the traditionally Jewish approach.

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And the Rules . . .

July 7, 2008 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , ,

In my post on Evidence for G-d, I made a distinction between G-d the Creator and G-d the Rule Giver.

I’ll lay my cards on the table and tell you why I did this. I believe that there is a huge population of people (I’ve spoken with a bunch of ‘em) who believe in G-d, but have a problem with organized religion. I think that there is a hair’s breadth of difference between these people and a bunch of people who call themselves atheists largely because they don’t believe in religion.

So, here I come. I have the chutzpa to call my blog “Balance,” and I make as if I have some approach that may find a centered approach to some of the questions brought up by the anti-religious world. I call it chutzpa because my personal belief system includes a belief that G-d revealed Himself to the Jews as Mount Sinai. How dare I, “religiously blind sheep,” “opiate consuming member of the blind masses,” try to appeal to reason!?! Like I said – chutzpa!

Therefore, I wanted to first lay out some evidence for a G-d who created the world. Let’s put our guard down for just a minute. Like I wrote, not proof, but yes evidence – there is some compelling evidence that this world has a Designer. Don’t worry about the rules yet. We’ll layer our approach so that we can stay on common ground for as long as possible. We’ll see where we can agree for as long as possible. The next step, then, which is this post is to lay out some evidence as to why I believe that G-d spoke took the Jews out of Egypt and gave them the Torah on Mount Sinai. We won’t get to any rules here or how or whether they impact you, just that there was revelation.

THE POWER OF A MIRACLE

There was a wild story in the New York Times about five years ago. It seems that a Chassidic fish store owner and his non-Jewish worker heard a fish talk before it was killed. I have no interest right now is discussing whether or not this was/wasn’t could/couldn’t be true. My observation is simple. If one person had claimed to have seen it, the story would have had as many legs as the fish. Two people made the claim, and it made it to the New York Times and throughout the blogosphere. This is a fascinating insight into the power of miracles.

Just for a few minutes, I’d like to ask the skeptics to take a brief trip with me (the non-skeptics will find this very easy). Imagine that a miracle occurred to you. Not something that could possibly explained by the natural laws that we are familiar with. You walk outside your home and everything is stopped. Birds flying in mid-air are frozen. People walking and driving down the street, likewise, are frozen as if there was a pause button that was hit. You are the only animation happening. Suddenly, you hear your name called with a deep rich baritone voice, “David.” (Use your imagination and plug in your own name if it’s anything other than David.)

Because fiction is not my forte, I’ll allow your imagination to finish all of the description. G-d speaks to you in whatever way you need to be convinced that it’s Him. He wishes you a nice day, and tells you that you need to do apply for a job at Home Depot in the flooring department. You get the point. The original excitement (or fear or plain ol’ being freaked out) might fade, but this event would leave a mark on you forever. A miracle (if they exist at all insists the skeptic) is powerful. It would be powerful without the voice of G-d (I couldn’t resist adding it – especially with the baritone voice part), but the power of a miracle lies in the suspension of all that you think you know. Reality gets turned on its head.

Now, let’s manipulate a few factors and see what happens.

What happens if instead of witnessing this miracle by yourself, you are joined by a friend? The presence of one extra person brings the miracle to a new level. When you see it by yourself, even if it is so clear to leave no doubt in your mind, you’ll always feel a bit strange, knowing that there is a chance that no one will ever believe you. Experiencing the witness with another person creates a bond that makes the experience so much more powerful. You can confirm the details; you can experience the lift together. That second person turns you from a person perceived as a loon to a story in the New York Times.

One other factor that we can change is to make the miracle last longer. Instead of it being a five minute experience, what happens if it lasts for an entire day? Again, the power of the experience expands exponentially. The longer it lasts, the more connection you have to the miracle.

The last factor that we add to our miracle is meaning. What if instead of telling you get a job at Home Depot, you and your friend were given a set of instructions that included the meaning of life and all of the “secrets” to happiness? And since the message would be long, G-d were to deliver to you notes to help you remember all of the instructions.

A final idea to this scenario to think about is the probability of deceit. When one person claims a Divine message, he can easily be lying. It’s all his claim. Two could also be lying, but it gets more difficult. We can cross examine the two “witnesses” to see if their stories match. They could still be lying, but depending of what they have to gain, their reputation before this and how well they stand up to tough questioning, to that extent their believability will be brought into question.

The more people who claim to witness a miracle, the harder it is to fake it. At some point, the idea becomes ridiculous. Ten people could get together and decide to be deceitful. Even twenty. But 100? 10,000? Somewhere along the lines, it becomes near to impossible to imagine a scam where so many people keep their mouths shut.

[It seems that most blogs have shorter posts. For the sake of trying to keep some people interested, I will post this piece in pieces. Let me know, please, if this makes it better or not. Part II should be along within a day or so.]

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Evidence for G-d

July 3, 2008 at 4:37 pm · Filed under Basic Beliefs ·Tagged , , , , , ,

For the sake of this post, I want to make a crucial distinction. This is about G-d, the Creator. This is not about G-d, the Rule Giver.

In my post about atheists, I wrote a bit about bad religion. It is my contention that this is one of the greatest challenges in having these conversations. I don’t think that so many people have a problem with belief in G-d. Their problem lies with believing in the G-d that they learn about from bad sources. This post is not about that G-d. He’s not a man who sits in a chair in the sky. The only aspect of His “nature” that we are concerned with here is that He is the Creator of the Universe. With help from G-d (typed with a smile), we’ll get to more about whether or not those rules were given. But not here and not now.

Most people have heard of the watchmaker, or teleological, proof of G-d. A person is walking along the beach and finds a watch. He wonders who might have lost it, and posits that perhaps it has always been there. Two points about this idea. The first is the problem with the word proof. I am neither capable nor desirous of presenting a dissertation of the different levels of what would be required for “proof.” If this interests you, please check out a short book that is downloadable for free from Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottleib called “Living Up to the Truth.” Instead of using the word proof, I’ll simply avoid this semantic battle and talk about evidence. We’re not looking for irrefutable evidence. We almost never get that in life. We’re looking for the most likely scenario. To hear evidence for G-d presented and to respond, “Yeah. Well maybe there are creatures from outer space of far superior intelligence than ours.” Yeah, maybe. I feel like I have to hold my nose as I address such a response. To step out of such silliness, we’ll just stick with “compelling evidence” and not offer “proof.”

The second point with the watchmaker “evidence” is that it is notoriously under appreciated and usually underdeveloped. When I say underdeveloped, I do not mean to take this to a level of college philosophy. I’m aware that Cicero and Descartes developed this idea (anyone with wikipedia could figure this out), and I’m aware that there are arguments against this. I am talking about the average Joe on the street. I’m talking about our observable universe and how little people seem to truly consider this. The arguments against this teleological argument are not overwhelming or crushing at all. Some of the challenges actually strengthens the argument.

FORGET ABOUT THE WATCH – A PAPER CLIP

The watch somehow made it onto the map as the prototype to show design and function. Let’s try to understand the mechanics behind this argument.

If someone were to suggest that after billions of years and millions of mutations, a watch appeared on the beach, we’d dismiss him as a certifiable whack job. Why? Simply, it’s because we recognize patterns and function. Something guided the pieces of that watch into all of the right places. But the watch isn’t the best starting place. It’s too complicated. Before we examine something like a watch, let’s get to something even more simple.

A paper clip is a wonderful little creation. We take it for granted, but a little thought would suggest that there were likely thousands of hours of planning that went into this simple tool. How many years of metallurgy did humanity go through to be able to create such a perfect balance of pliable and rigid metal! How many failed shapes were tried before someone came up with that shape which is so familiar to us! And, then, how many years of development went into getting us to the point where there could be machinery that would produce these little clips by the millions so that we could stock so many supply shelves throughout the world with these awesome little widgets! To suggest that it just happened is literally insane. And, yet, this is one of the most simple products in our advanced society.

With even the most bare-bones simple gadgets, it is so obvious to us that something with so much design and function can’t be accidental.

ADD COMPLEXITY. ADD INSANITY

Now consider a pen, a bicycle, or even our world famous watch and what happens. The pen is perfectly calibrated (sometimes it’s not and it’s a woeful mess) to allow the ink out. The ink is complex as is the plastic. What grand functionality to a pen. Each item that we examine, if we look at what it does and how we got to the point of making these, is a marvel. The more complexity that a thing has the more insane it becomes to suggest that it happened by accident.

What happens when we take it to the next level? Look at a car! Now we can jump out of our skins with amazement. How many parts are there in a car? Each part is complex, and each is important to the functionality of the whole. The more we climb into this idea, the more we should be clear that complexity, design, and function speaks increasingly more loudly to purposeful creators.

I don’t use the term insane to insult. It is the proper use of the word. A person who were to believe that a paper clip, much less a space shuttle were products of accident and lots of time would not belong in a sane world. You don’t need to have seen a space shuttle created to know that it was. It’s built into our minds to recognize pattern. The ability to recognize pattern is a central aspect of any aptitude test that I’ve ever taken. It is basic measure of being in touch with reality.

THE TEENY LITTLE BABY STEP OF FAITH

What happens now with our evidence? It goes bonkers. We now turn from the world of human creations to the world of nature. Even with the mind boggling advances of science today, the level of complexity in the natural world is in a different category entirely from the man-made world. The thought that something can not only contain the complexity of a cell but reproduce already introduces us to a world which is several standards of deviation away from the man-made world. Imagine that buying two computers and leaving them alone in a room would be all you’d ever have to do to forever have generations of computers. Put your digital camera in the ground, give it just enough water and sunlight and come back a few months later to a tree filled with as many cameras as you could ever use.

My goal is neither to be ridiculous nor is it to wax poetic. My goal is to encourage you to stop simplifying the teleological argument into, “Yeah. The watchmaker thing. You know there are problems with that.” Think about it. Consider not only the complexity of a cell and its ability to repair itself and reproduce, but think about every part of your body, inside and out. Consider that all of those complex parts, made up of the complex cells, work together to perform countless tasks. Consider the balance of the natural world and how the world is so incredibly interdependent. Contemplate the spinning of the earth, tides, seasons, and gravity. It all works together.

So why isn’t it as obvious that the world has a Designer as it is obvious that the paper clip has one?

The answer that I propose is that the massive gap has a name. The unfathomable chasm between the complexity level of the man-made world and the complexity of the natural world is called free choice. We sometimes think that free choice lies in whether or not you want to eat vanilla or mint chocolate chip. That is a preference that might even be outside of your realm of free choice. Your free choice lies right there between whether you are willing to face the Divine or not. For those who want to see G-d, it is not a massive leap of faith at all. The obviousness of design, pattern, and function in the natural world is so clear as to be far past insane once you look for it. However, the gap is so massive that it needs some contemplation to notice it. In that gap the condition known as humanity seeks to rear its head.

This great distance between the level of complexity of the man-made and natural world has the ability to be clouded by human weakness. There is a part of us that wants to see G-d, but there is a less frequently discussed part of us that does not want to see G-d. We want to be left alone, unburdened by thoughts of eternity and morality. Humans have a unique ability to cloud their thinking; we can fool ourselves. If I want to believe in a G-dless world, I will cleverly amass all of the questions available to me and conveniently ignore any evidence that challenges my thesis. Of course the opposite is true. If I want to believe in G-d, I can ignore challenges to this theory, while only focusing on that which supports my desire to have world inhabited by G-d. How do you work out of this puzzle. Use your brain to gather information And just as importantly, use your power of introspection to investigate whether or not you’re being honest with your own motives. As a believer, I issue this challenge not only to those who don’t believe. Those who believe, I believe (couldn’t resist) would also do well to clarify their beliefs. If it’s really G-d (and it is), then we need not have fear in using our brains to find Him on an ongoing basis.

HOW ABOUT MUTATIONS!

One of the main challenges to this approach is that of mutations and disease. It seems to point to an imperfect world. To make a similar point to one that I made in the Atheist post, it is a question and a challenge, but it is far from a nail in the coffin. Very good point – there are mutations and seeming imperfections in the world. That challenges our understanding of who G-d is and why such a world would have these difficulties, but it does nothing to the argument of design. There are seeming flaws within the design, but there is still the infinitely complex world around us that screams (a persistent whisper is probably more accurate) an infinitely wise Designer. We’ll have to explore the problems together, but this is a post on a blog and not a book, so you’ll have to wait until we get there.

I wrote above, “Some of the challenges actually strengthens the argument.” There is a challenge that goes attempts to show the dissimilarity between the two types of design because the man-made design is a product of so many different people and generations. This is not a challenge. It strengthens my belief. The best that we can produce after thousands of years of design still pales to the most simple parts of the natural world. This doesn’t suggest that there must also be many gods. It suggests that the intellect behind the design is exponentially greater than the man-made version. It leads us towards a G-d whose wisdom is infinitely complex.

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Hebrew, Dash in G-d, Moses the Typewriter?

July 2, 2008 at 1:53 pm · Filed under Q & A ·Tagged , ,

Q: I heard someone saying something about the Hebrew language being G-d’s language. What is that all about? Is that the language that Adam and Eve spoke?

A: Whereas all other languages use words as representative as the things that they mean, Hebrew is a language of essence. The word for table has no inherent connection to the thing that we eat, study, or lay a guitar on top of. I’m not a kabbalist, but I’ve picked up bits and pieces throughout my studies, and when it says that G-d created the world by saying, “Let there be light,” it was the words that actually created the light. More, is that the words are still being spoken. It might be more accurate to say that G-d didn’t create the world; He is constantly creating the world.

Adam not only spoke to Eve in Hebrew, but our Sages teach us that he had a great wisdom in naming the animals. What was the great wisdom? Just call that one a horse, and that one would be a porcupine. His great wisdom was that he saw their essences and saw that a horse was a combination of the Hebrew letters samech, vav, and samech. He understand the exact nature of each letter and of each animal.

Q: Do you believe that Moses was G-d’s typewriter, so to speak?

A: Yep. The fifth book is more akin to his “contributions,” but he was such a perfected being that his ego was solely to serve G-d, so it too is G-d’s word. He was the human channel through whom G-d revealed His will.

Q: Why do you write G-d with the dash? Do you use a different word when speaking?

A: There are a lot of things that we do to remind ourselves of G-d’s presence. The dash serves as a reminder – this word is different than other words. Like anything, it can be a thoughtless habit, but it serves to help increase your reverence.

I refer to G-d as Hashem in my spoken language amongst those who understand. It simply means “the name.” I will pronounce the word G-d, but I try to not use it lightly. “Oh my G-d,” or using the word as an expression of surprise is not so black and white as to be forbidden, but I believe that it dulls the sensitivity.

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