From: sg04@gte.com (Yechezkal Shimon Gutfreund)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Bitachon (Trust)
Date: 28 Jan 93 15:06:31 GMT
Reply-To: sg04@gte.com
Organization: GTE Laboratories, Inc.

In article AA07929@relay1.UU.NET, MASH@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il (Michael Shimshoni) writes:
] >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").
] 

I think I should apologize here. It can be difficult to know to what
extent one should elaborate electronic messages. Sometimes one can
be too brief and leave out some points. 

I did not really intend to personalize the example I was giving. Rather,
I intended it as a template. To give an example and methaphor with
which to explore the issue. Perhaps if the following paragraph was
prepended, it would better convey my meaning.

"We are all aware of that of certain individuals who can be extremely
stubborn and self-centered. [Although we may not see this in ourselves].
I think we can easily picture the traits of such a person. Let me
give such a characterization."


] 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.
] :-)

I will agree with you when we are dealing with scientific concepts.
That is science must be based on rational inquiry and and results
derived must be completely accessable and defensible to human
logic and understanding. That is, the entire scaffold of logic used
to put forth a scientific concept must be one which stands purely
on cold object human deductive processes. [Sometimes though, the
choice of what to pursue is based on intuition and feel, but I
would insists on the results to be have more solidly based]. I am
familiar with the Michaelson-Morley experiments and why Einstein
found them so useful.

However, I see the realm of human intellectual inquiry as being larger
than that of which can be pursued by scientific endeavor (typified
by inductive and deductive reasoning). My model is that of a Venn
diagram with scientific inquiry being a proper subset of a larger 
field of inquiry. For example, scientific inquiry is poorly suited
to address issues concerned with the purpose of things, ethics,
why particular physical systems are the way they are, etc.


] 
] 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.
] 
 
>From the tone and quality of your letter I see that you have taken
the time to read and appreciate what I have written. I thank you for
that. I think we do agree that one has the freedom to choose whether
to believe in G-d. Or to put it differently, we have free-will. There
is no intellectual compulsion that neccessitates the belief in G-d.

Trust in G-d, belief in G-d, are all rooted in elements of the soul
transcend cold hard human rational logic. Sometimes one sees a token
of this in how people deal with the Holocaust. There are people who,
whenever G-d is mentioned will pull out the Holocaust and rail against
G-d and say that this is why he cannot exist. I would say that the
reason for the strength and violence of the response is not because
they don't believe in G-d. The opposite, for them G-d is quite real
and tangible - and they are MAD at him. Furious. Because they
do not understand Him. They do not understand how He could have
done such a thing. They have an almost envious belief in G-d, especially
when compared to those whose belief in G-d is based on following
a majority, rote training, or monentary reasons.

You argue for that agnosticsm, for you, solves more problems than
belief in G-d does. I think I can understand the perspective you
are coming from. But I aslo would hold that there are some very
difficult problems in such an ethical system:

Each individual human intellect can come to a different rationalization
of what is good/bad right/wrong. What happens when two such agnostics
or atheists meet? What happens when one decides that he can encrouch
on the other's space? What would happen if someone decides his intellect
tells him it is good/right to punch Michael Shimshoni in the nose
because that would improve the aesthetics of Michael's face? :-).
When there is no absolute transcendental good/bad, these problems
become more than just hypothetical issues but practical day-to-day
issues.

I'm sure you are aware of this issue, since you state you have
considered these matters for many years. I only wanted to make
sure that it is raised and examined - and that we make clear that
there are indeed tremendously messy issues when one chooses to
deny G-d.

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Yechezkal Shimon Gutfreund		 		  sgutfreund@gte.com
GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA			    harvard!bunny!sgutfreund
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish