From: MASH@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il (Michael Shimshoni)
Subject: Re: Bitachon (Trust)
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:28:17 GMT

In: <6324@ceylon.gte.com>
sg04@gte.com (Yechezkal Shimon Gutfreund) replies to me:

>In article AA17284@das.wang.com, MASH@WEIZMANN.WEIZMANN.AC.IL (Michael
>Shimshoni) writes:
>]I rather  stop here. The Rebbe  by any possible twist  has to support
>]the believe in the  "good" God.  As I have stated  before on scj, with
>]the Holocaust and its one  million (lacking of merit?) Jewish children
>]and  babes, and  the  many millions  of others  murdered,  no talk  of
>]"revealed bad" but "concealed good", can *conceal* the fact that there
>]was no God there  when he was needed, all the rest  is just talk, talk
>]and talk.
>]
>
>If Michael will permit it, could I tease him just a bit?

At this point I wish to state with sincerity, that I see no teasing by
Yechezkal in what he  wrote in the following, and I  wish that I would
also be able to write in such a restrained way.

>I think the problem is exactly that: people decide where they want to stop.

I plead guilty to that, and see no problem with it.

>They will let an argument go only to the point where THEY decide. If the
>argument goes beyond what they already have decided is the "wrong" answer
>they close their minds and solve the problem of further discussion.

Here I disagree strongly.  Surely when posting my above quoted article
I  had decided  on it  before, I  did not  start thinking  about these
matters just this week.  But that  is not where it all started.  There
was a time when  I was on the other side.  I  was brought up believing
it all, just  as Yecheskal believes now.  And then  came the Holocaust
and some other  experiences in my life.   I also grew a  bit older and
made myself examine my beliefs which till then I had accepted as I was
taught by my  parents, teachers, Rabbis and all the  others.  Surely I
consulted many, especially in the O camp.  And then, and since then, I
have come to the conclusion that for me that kind of a hypothesis does
not work.   Moreover, the  world without  a good  etc.  God  made more
sense than with  that concept.  So in the good  all fashion of natural
sciences,  I dropped  an extra  hypothesis  which served  not only  no
purpose in making  sense with the world, but opened  all kind question
it provided no answers for (except in the most  circular sense: "there
is a God and he knows best  and you are too stupid to understand it").

This  sticking to  (IMO)  outdated  concept of  a  personal etc.   God
reminds me of  the desperate rear action fought by  many physicists to
keep the concept of Ether.  A priori they hypothesized it because they
"knew"  that a  medium was  needed to  propagate the  electro-magnetic
transverse waves through it.  Just look  at the sound waves which need
the air,  and cannot exist in  vacuum or the elastic  waves etc.  They
had  from the  beginning  problems with  that ether,  it  had to  have
infinite  rigidity  but also  offer  no  resistance to  bodies  moving
through it.  It also had built  into it the concept of absolute speeds
but  as we  do not  discuss physics  here, the  final solution  was to
examine the  assumption that these  electro magnetic waves  "needed" a
medium.  So this  assumption was dropped, as it  created more problems
than it solved.  As lehavdil Hillel said, these are the essentials, if
you are really  interested in the ether concept go  and study physics.
:-)

For *me*  the concept of  the caring  God created more  problems while
solving none  except some psychological  need for comfort.   Others it
seems, and  there are many  like that, have found  a way to  live with
that God.   I obviously do  not deny anyone the  right to come  to any
conclusion, but all I  tried to point out was that  for me some entity
invented with  all the "needed"  attributes, of infinite  wisdom which
obviously poor me cannot understand, is as far fetched as the nebulous
entity ether, and thus rejected by me.

>                            Then there are incidents where all humankind
>cannot see the good in the event. Death and the Holocaust would certainly
>qualify.
>
>Still, that is no proof that there is not a good.

Nothing is a proof  in those matters.  We are just  looking what to us
makes most sense.  And in that people differ.

>                                                  That on the G-dly level
>there is a good, and that this good will be ultimately revealed in the
>world to come. That there is a revealed bad is undeniable, that we have
>a right to complain to G-d is verifiable by the contents of our daily
>prayers. We have a right to ask for positive and revealed good.

As said, you have the right.  I chose  not to make use of it, as I see
no point in it.  After humanity asking for millennia for that positive
and revealed good, perhaps the time has come to say, enough is enough,
there is nothing there, the King is naked?

>But when we say stop, no, that there is no good, we deny G-d.

True!

>                                                              Rather than
>admit that our own human intellect is limited, we choose atheism.

I call  it agnosticism, but  that is neither  here not there.   I know
only too well that my intellect is  limited, but after all it was that
"limited" human intellect which invented the concept of God.

>                                                                  Rather
>than admit there is a reason, and that the reason is inherently trancends
>human rationality (and thus is a G-dly reason). Rather than do that some
>choose atheism. To set themselves up as the sole arbitrator of what
>is and is not possible.

True, the sole  arbitrator in any case, whether I  add the man thought
of concept of God or not.

Ish be'emunato yihye.

>Yechezkal Shimon Gutfreund		 		  sgutfreund@gte.com

 Michael Shimshoni