Unparsimonious Explanations

(A follow-up to "You Assume the Outside World Exists" Part 2)

1. "The ball moved because her hand exerted force on it, and an invisible friction demon pushed it at the same time; the effect is identical to that of her pushing it alone."

2. "The balloon floated because helium is lighter than air, and there is a complex network of magic levitation force field wires hoisting it up; the effect is identical to what we see just if helium is lighter than air."

3. "Species evolved through natural selection, and God guided the process; the effect is identical to that of evolution through natural selection alone."

4. "The Torah was written by humans, and they were divinely inspired; the result is identical to what we would expect if it were written by humans alone."

What Limits of Rationalism?

I'm kind of confused by this post. In discussing the limits of rationalism in Judaism, R' Slifkin writes:

In my view, although some of the Rishonim applied the rationalist approach to Judaism without limitations, we cannot do so. This is for both practical and theoretical reasons.

The practical problem is that

"there is considerable conflict between 21st century academic scholarship and 21st century Orthodox Jewish ideology."

The theoretical problem is that

"I think that there is an irreducible conflict between the very nature of emunah and rationalism."

I agree with both these points, and think they are problems for rationalists who want to believe in Judaism. But R' Slifkin also writes:

I don't see this as reason to entirely discard the rationalist approach. Besides, it's just not possible to do so; you can't make people shut their minds off, and Judaism does not expect people to do so....Nevertheless, I think it should be accepted from the outset that there can be limits to this approach.

This is the part I don't understand. Asking people to accept that there can be limits to where their reason takes them is, indeed, asking people to shut off their minds. I agree that you can't do that. So how does he still wind up with the last sentence of the paragraph, that there still must be limits?

Rationalism and reason don't really have limits; Judaism does. I sympathize with his aim--to keep rationalism and Orthodox Judaism together--but I think he realizes they don't really mesh well, and this piece just comes across as somewhat confused to me. Either you end up "limiting reason"--which he recommends, despite recognizing that this is irrational and likely impossible in the same paragraph--or you end up compromising Jewish belief.

"You Assume the Outside World Exists" Part 2

After someone pointing out that his version of "divine revelation to multiple authors" is unfalsifiable, ModernOrthoprax commenter Moshe writes:

You mean like your strange idea that the world that you perceive actually exists, and that your consciousness is not, say, merely embedded in a memory chip?

I thought I would expand on my prior post on why this is a bad argument. Admittedly, this probably shouldn't be responded to that seriously, but I think it's interesting and I think his argument actually backfires on him.

1) Any time you see someone making an argument of this form, it is just about bound to fail. Moshe's argument here is not of the form, "God exists because [...]" or "The Torah is divine because [...]." Instead, it is of the form, "even though I don't have justification for believing the Torah is divine, I have the epistemic right to believe it is because [...]." The problem with this form of argument is that it can be applied indiscriminately to anything, from belief in the Koran to belief in Last Thursdayism. If you have the "right" to believe in things without justification, than so does everyone. And if everything is justified by your argument, nothing has been justified.

2) I think Moshe's argument backfires on him. The existence of the outside world is not, in fact, a strange idea. It's the simplest inference from and explanation of what we experience every time we open our eyes. Moshe's alternate interpretations of the data, in comparison, are extravagant, and so we reject them (beyond philosophical musings).

You can always make more and more complex interpretations of the same data:

-"The existence of dinosaurs is an unfalsifiable question, since God could have planted dinosaur bones and it would look the same."

-"The theory of gravity is unfalsifiable, since I propose a 'Gravity Demon,' whose tricky actions always make things look like they behave according to the theory of gravity."

This would be silly. A) Relative to the null hypothesis that dinosaurs never existed, dinosaur bones provide evidence that they did. B) Relative to different interpretations of the same data, we accept the simplest inference--that dinosaurs existed--and reject extravagant explanations that are interchangeable with the current evidence (e.g., God planted the bones). This point is the canon of parsimony, aka Occam's Razor. Same for a "gravity demon"--we cut down explanatory dead weight.

I don't see how our everyday experience is much different. A) Relative to the null hypothesis that the world does not exist, we have plenty of evidence and experience to suggest it does (i.e. open your eyes). B) Relative to alternate interpretations of the same data, we settle on the simplest one--that the world exists as we experience it. Proposing evil demons tricking us or brains in vats would be an extravagant interpretation.

This is where I think Moshe's argument backfires: the same reason that we accept that the the outside world exists is the same reason I reject divine revelation to the multiple authors of the Torah. Instead of the explanation "humans wrote this work," Moshe proposes, "humans wrote this work AND it was 'divinely inspired' AND it looks exactly the same as if humans wrote it." Obviously, the canon of simplicity dictates that we accept the first interpretation of the exact same data.

Thus, the same logic dictates that I accept the existence of the external world (the simplest interpretation) and reject divine inspiration of the Torah (an extravagant interpretation), rather than Moshe's claim to the contrary.

CAN one still doubt anything and everything? Sure; induction can always be mistaken, a complex explanation could end up correct, etc. But is it reasonable, consistent, and common-sensical to disbelieve in divine inspiration of the Torah in light of basic beliefs about the external world? I believe it is.

"Skeptics Are Third-Graders"

I get tired of reading that "skeptics only attack their third grade notions of God and Judaism. They think it's all as they were taught back then, or it's nothing."

Rubbish. When I was still 'dox, I was a rationalist. I argued for the Rambam's position of treating outrageous stories in Tanach as allegories. I argued for the Maharal's style of decoding outrageous statements of Chazal as hidden, coded, allegorical wisdoms. I went through "the Torah is not a science textbook," followed by "the Torah is not a history textbook," and so on. I did everything you could expect from a Modern Orthodox intellectual trying to make Orthodox Judaism rational and understandable.

I reject that. Don't tell me Breishit is metaphorical: tell me what the metaphor stands for, and why I should accept that as true. Tell me why I should believe in any supernatural claims whatsoever, including dualism. Tell me why I should believe any form of Divine revelation occurred--not just the sort they teach you in third grade. Tell me why I should accord any intellectual authority to Chazal, not just simple belief or disbelief in their sayings.

And so on.

Obligatory Beliefs

Orthodoxy is replete with discussions of what one may or may not believe. Some people are minimalists (e.g. Marc Shapiro), some are maximalists (e.g., I dunno, pick your anti-Slifkin-ite). But I don't find minimalism here much better: the very notion of a mandated belief seems bizarre and repugnant to me. How can you be obligated or forbidden to believe something? If it seems true, believe it, if not, don't, and if you're not sure, say you're not sure.

Now, one can be obligated by reason, in a manner of speaking. If a teachers shows you a perfectly clear geometric proof, you are forced to accept it, so to speak--it's not a choice. But how can there be an a priori discussion about what you may or may not believe, which forces you to choose beliefs?

It leads to some interesting consequences for the more rationally-inclined believers--the kind of thing XGH used to mock.

A couple months ago, I sat with a number of people, a couple of whom were wholeheartedly relating miracles and magical incidents that supposedly surrounded one of the Gedolei Hador. (Frankly, I found the supposed miracles to be parlor room stuff, but I'll put that aside.) One other person present made all the right skeptical points: was there any independent verification? For those people who claimed they were healed by the rabbis prayers, do we know the total number of people who asked for healing prayers?

But then he stopped and said: "But on the other hand, Judaism has some tenets of our faith that might sound silly to an outsider, but we believe them. Are we supposed to believe these kind of things are possible as well?"

I thought, exactly. Once one has admitted the concept of religiously mandated beliefs to the picture, how can one scoff at crazier beliefs? As far as I can tell, minimizing which beliefs are mandated does not help: once this is an acceptable notion at all, why not take all midrashim literally, or believe modern rabbis have prophetic powers? Etc. The reason, it turns out, is because our hypothetical rationalist doesn't think those beliefs are actually mandated--not because the beliefs are silly.

There is Grandeur in this View of Life

I recently overheard two women talking. One was discussing her pregnancy, and how she had undergone her first ultrasound. She then exclaimed, "God is so amazing!"

This seems like a nice spring board to discuss a common accusation against skepticism. The religious believer sees wondrous miracles inhabiting her life, and the cold, rational skeptic turns it all into mechanisms and equations. The religious person sees the divine gift of life, and the skeptic sees only chemicals and processes by reducing everything scientifically.

I'd beg to differ, though, about that caricature. The baby developing inside her began as one single cell, containing half her DNA and half her husband's DNA. That cell then began dividing. Now, each daughter cell and granddaughter cell would get the exact same DNA as the original one--and DNA, of course, comprises the instructions telling a cell what to do. The cells have to eventually take on different jobs, though, throughout the body. And so over time, the cells differentiate in terms of which genes they express, first into simple groups based on small chemical or physical differences. Over more time, the differentiations accumulate until you have liver cells, nerve cells, skin cells, etc, each of which expresses only some of the genes in its DNA and thus performs a different job. Incredibly, no one guides this process, even though it begins from one cell with one set of DNA. The differentiations flows from local rules, as if a paper filled with magnets in the right way would fold into a beautiful origami pattern on its own.

This child will then be born with innate cognitive functions developed by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years, for more complicated ones, and millions of years for more basic ones. It will begin imitating others rapidly after birth. It will form attachment with its mother in a particular stage. It will learn language in a later stage, in the same age range as other children. It will go on to develop a theory of mind around age four. All of this is programmed to unfold, with no one having programmed it.

When I consider all of this--not to mention, for example, the complexities of the DNA code written in only four bases on a more micro scale--I am filled with awe and wonder at the complexity involved. That this complexity could emerge on its own over thousands of millions of years via a simple algorithm--and go on to allow the love, pain, and friendship the child will feel at some point--is all the more mind-boggling.

In comparison, isn't reducing it to "God is so amazing" a little cheap? If one were struck by the processes involved and felt an immanent God equated with nature behind it all, that would be one thing. Or if "God is amazing" were just an expression of gratitude and wonder, great. But doesn't Someone magically getting the baby in and out--and I don't mean to belittle her excitement, but that's how she seemed to mean it--pale in comparison to the truth, which is itself quite wondrous and awe-inspiring?

There can indeed be grandeur in this view of life.

Evil as a Reason to Believe?

Most people think of the problem of evil as one of the prime theological challenges facing religions throughout history.

A commenter writes on XGH, though:

There are many reasons to assume God exists -

1) why do bad things happen to good people?
2) Why do we exist?
3) what is our purpose?
4) How does something come from Quantum Soup if all there exists are laws of physics?

Ignoring 2-4 for now*, it was at first incredibly odd to me that someone cited bad things happening to good people as a reason to assume God exists. This was one of the prime arguments against religion for millennia!

But I realized how much sense that makes. One of the prime motivations for religious thinking, it seems, is to explain the universe in an ordered way. The Just World Hypothesis in social psychology states that we all have a need to view the world as ordered and just. If something bad happens to someone and we cannot help them, we will often tend to assume it must in some way be their own fault. By doing so, we keep the world ordered, and separate ourselves from the bad things that happen.

As such, while an argument from evil would be just about the worst logical argument for God ever envisioned, it gets directly to the root of the matter as an emotional argument for God.

*2 and 3, like 1, are psychological reasons we would like to assume God exists, not standalone reasons to assume God does exist. 4 is somewhat unintelligible to me as written.

Daat Emet

Luke Skyhopper

I was reading Undercover Kofer, and I stumbled across his link to a Daat Emet article which brings Torah sources to essentially prove that the Torah and Halacha cannot have remained intact since Sinai.

Daat Emet is an Israeli site which seeks to to dismantle various dogmatic arguments often espoused by Orthodox Judaism and popularized by the Kiruv movement.

While I have yet to check Daat Emet's sources in the original texts, I figured I'd share the link.

http://www.daatemet.org/articles/article.cfm?article_id=9

enjoy

Raising Orthoprax Children

JG

This topic seems to me to be one of the most impossible facing both orthopraxy as a group (movement?) and orthopraxers as individuals. If it will stand as a group/movement (groovement?), orthopraxy should know if it will attempt to be passed down to children, or if it is only a transition stage for those who have lost their belief. Individuals, meanwhile, must face the question: what on earth do you teach children, and how do you raise them in an orthoprax home?

The options, as they appear to me:

1. Try to teach orthopraxy directly--no beliefs taught, but "these are the practices we do, just because this is what Ortho(something) Jews do. It's our community and lifestyle." This seems to get sticky, however, when getting into the cognitive dissonance of traditions like brachot and prayer. ("No, we don't believe in the God of Abraham. Now stop asking questions and go daven Shemoneh Esreh.") Or, when the child gets old enough to understand what Orthodoxy is, and wants to do things Friday night.

2. One parent is orthoprax, one orthodox. The orthoprax one stays quiet and lets the orthodox one do the talking. Perhaps this could actually work for some who don't care much or aren't strong disbelievers, but not a great idea in my view. People need intellectual honesty in their lives as best as they can reach it.

3. Parents recreate their exact life experiences by perpetuating a "noble lie," teaching orthodoxy until the child reaches a certain age. Then, they sit the kid down and reveal that it has been a lie, but the kid is now too emotionally/communally invested to walk away. A repulsive idea, of course, but I include it to point out that, quite frankly, it's the only actual way to perpetuate the orthoprax experience. Orthopraxy is a weird lifestyle, what can I say.

4. A more sensible combination of 1, 2, and 3: orthodox beliefs are taught just in the way many innocent beliefs are taught to or maintained for kids, in a light, left-wing MO manner. (There wasn't much focus on belief in my MO upbringing, now that I think about it--that was when I got to yeshiva.) As they get older, more and more serious age-appropriate discussion about the world ensues.

So, more or less normal LWMO upbringing, but parents will step in to undercut something taught in school if it's past a line to them, and get the child thinking critically about religion at an age-appropriate level.

5. Parent(s) is/are orthoprax, but raise kids more or less Conservative, coming to terms with an ebbing away from orthodoxy. Traditions are kept in the home for traditional reasons, but with greater flexibility than the parents' upbringing would allow. Jewish education is more or less Conservative, and children are given the freedom to do what they would like with the traditions with which they were raised.

Did I miss any?

Of these, #5 seems to me by far the most sensible, but I can see how for some people more invested in orthodoxy, #4 would be more realistic. #5 would mean orthopraxy is not really tenable as a movement for more than a one or two generations. Perhaps that's a shame, perhaps not. Either way, is there a better option?