In my various interactions with atheists I am often informed that there  is “no evidence” for the existence of a God (or gods as they like to  add.)  This tact is difficult to process in as much as great  philosophers, theologians and even scientists through countless ages have  cogently presented this evidence.  The non-believer imagines that such  evidence, if indeed it did exist, has been thoroughly refuted and  therefore anyone who continues to take it seriously is either stupid,  ignorant or evil.  It does not, as a rule, enter the consciousness of the  non-believer that whatever counter-arguments exist, that they remain  just that – arguments and not knock-out blows against the original ideas.   The upshot is that the many compelling (and reasonable) arguments that  have been presented over the millennia exist quite intact and unharmed by  opposing notions.  For those who are unfamiliar with them, or who that  might appreciate a refresher course, I propose to outline 54 of them for  your independent evaluation.  This first piece will attempt to  colloquially explain what is known as the “Cosmological Argument.”

The Cosmological Argument is one of the oldest and most intuitive  arguments in favor of the existence of God.  It has been treated by the  likes of Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas and as well as by  Eastern and African thinkers. The basic form of the argument goes like  this: everything we see in our world is contingent (it has a cause),  there cannot be an endless series of causes (an infinite regress), and  therefore there must be a primordial cause that is the cause of all  causes. Aristotle referred to this cause as the “Unmoved Mover”  and Western tradition refers to this original cause as God.

Read the whole thing here.

Try as I might, I continue to be startled by the mindset of the non-believer. It’s not so much that I can’t grasp the notion that someone could believe that there is no Creator and that there is no grand design to the universe, but rather that so many of their choices and thinking patterns seem to suggest that they believe something quite unlike that which they profess.  Often, I’ve inquired of non-believers if it at all vexes them that nothing that they have ever done or will ever do will make the slightest difference to anyone on any level? After all, one random grouping of molecules interacting with another has no inherent meaning or value. I still await the brave soul (or neuron complex if you prefer) who will respond that I am quite correct; that no thought, deed, action or impulse is any more significant or meaningful than any other, that statements like “I would like to enslave all of humanity” and “I would like a chocolate bar” are functionally equivalent, and that their very own thoughts and words are intrinsically suspect as they are nothing more than some indiscriminate electro-chemical impulses. Until then, I will carry on believing that most “non-believers” actually believe a bit more than they generally let on, or are willing to admit to themselves. That, or that they have contented themselves to willfully act out fantasies that bear no relation to their purported worldview.

Let’s put this assumption to a test. How would you answer the following series of questions? I posit that if you are inclined to answer any of them from a non-materialist perspective then you might secretly suspect that there are grander cosmic forces at work than those discernible on a purely empiric level, or, possibly, that you are a victim of societal programming.

1. Would you be willing to sell your parent’s remains for dog food?

If you answered no, why? As there are finite resources available to us as we plod through our limited number of revolutions on this planet, wouldn’t it be in your interest to maximize them — especially considering that a non-functional carcass provides little to no personal or societal benefit (and is a little unpleasant)? If you suggest that it represents something that was important to you and therefore you are inclined to treat it with more respect I would ask, “so what?” Your notions of respect and importance are subjective, non-intellectual whims that in any case (as we’ve said) are in reality nothing more than tiny electrical blips in your skull and worth far less than cash.

Could it be that subconsciously you suspect that it’s just wrong to do it — wrong in a way that transcends your temporality? If not, and if you would sell your mother’s corpse so that it can be made into pet grub, congratulations: You are an authentic non-believer.

Read the whole thing here

All sentient people possess the same intuitive awareness of their own existence. We refer to this cognizance as the “self,” and though it is one of the most fundamental human experiences, it is also one of the most mysterious. I have asked people on very many occasions to answer the question “who are you?” without using their name, profession or character traits. Most are stumped and find themselves surprised to have never really considered the question before. Who indeed are we? It seems to me that the answer to this query is fairly binary — either our self-awareness is a function of the mechanistic forces of the brain and its structure or our consciousness exists in time but not in space and is rooted in a plane of reality that is beyond (but interacts with) our own. All we need concern ourselves with is — what is the simplest solution to what Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett has referred to as the “problem of consciousness?” As I have in the past, I draw much of my inspiration on this topic from my friend Moshe Averick and his compelling book “Nonsense of a High Order.”

In this discussion, many modern scientific thinkers have taken position that consciousness is an illusory faculty created by our neuronal activity. According to this position, our subjective self-awareness is wholly imagined fantasy that has no objective existence:

“Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not; some deep entity inside the brain that corresponds to the “self”, some kernel of awareness that runs the show … after more than a century of looking for it brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.” (Journalist Michael Leminick, Time Magazine)

“We feel, most of the time, like we are riding around inside our bodies, as though we are an inner subject that can utilize the body as a kind of object. This last representation is an illusion … “ (Atheist author Sam Harris)

“The intuitive feeling that we have that there’s an executive “I” that sits in the control room of our brain … is an illusion.” (Dr. Steven Pinker)

These thinkers all readily acknowledge that our actual experience of reality seems to fly in the face of their description of it — hence Professor Dennett’s “problem of consciousness.” One would think that in order to draw conclusions about the true nature of this problem they would rely on carefully researched evidence and hard facts before informing us that every experience that we have (or will ever have) — from love and morality to the appreciation of beauty and free will — are fictitious. Here are some examples of what the world of science does actually offer on this topic:

“Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious.” (Dr. Jerry Fodor, Professor of philosophy and cognitive science)

“The problem of consciousness tends to embarrass biologists. Taking it to be an aspect of living things, they feel they should know about it and be able to tell physicists about it, whereas they have nothing relevant to say.” (Dr. George Wald, Nobel Prize winning biologist)

“Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all.” (Dr. Nick Herbert, Physicist)

Read the whole thing here.

Across the nation, there were strong reactions to the Casey Anthony trial and verdict.  In cases such as these there is (after the fact) natural wonder about the nature of our judicial system and whether or not it is truly just.  Judaism has long valued the judicial process and considers it part and parcel of spiritual practice – to adjudicate correctly is a holy act. Therefore it has always been regarded with the utmost seriousness.

There are some critical differences between how Torah law would have processed this case and how it was done in the civil court.  Tonight, we will examine these differences and discuss what you feel are the pros and cons of each – learning a new and valuable perspective along them way.

Please note that the class begins at 8:00 pm, directly after Rabbi Shiff’s class on “Heaven and Hell” beforehand at 7:00.

Have a great week!

I had the pleasure this week of fulfilling my (first ever) civic obligation of jury duty and was one of the first people interviewed to sit on a case involving an auto accident. The pleasant, lightly bearded judge asked each of us 16 questions, each aimed at determining if we could adjudicate the case without bias. It was, I realized toward the end, with good reason.

Most people readily believe that they themselves are essentially fully independent thinkers, and that closed-mindedness, intellectual inflexibility and an irrational commitment to pre-conceived thinking dwells only in the feeble minds of others. Think about it: When was the last time in the course of discussion that someone admitted to you something like, “You’re right, I have just blindly swallowed all of the positions and cultural mores of my milieu” or, “Yes, I agree that no amount of oppositional information will ever dissuade me from the beliefs I hold?” No one is immune from this state of affairs, and it requires courage and perpetual vigilance to even venture outside of the intellectual echo chamber that most of us inhabit.

There are those who believe that the scientific community is uniquely positioned to avoid these pitfalls. They suggest that the system of peer review is inherently self-critical, and as such is structurally quarantined from bias. Some scientists think otherwise and note that science, in as much as it is conducted by human beings, is subject to the same partiality as every other endeavor. As the (secular) scientific philosopher David Berlinski, author of “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions,” has suggested, the peer review process itself is often a rubber stamp of certain designated culturally acceptable positions. Berlinski writes that, “like the communist party under Lenin, science is [in its own eyes] infallible because its judgments are collective. Critics are unneeded, and since they are unneeded, they are not welcome.” The mere mention of non-doctrinal positions frequently elicits (unscientific) histrionics and name calling. Words like “creationist,” for example, are readily bandied about to silence dissent and are designed to assign idiocy to those people (even secular) who dare note that modern evolutionary and cosmological theories are fraught with gaps, inconsistencies and fragmentary evidence. Tellingly, this is done by people who have a predilection to embrace randomness and who tenaciously proclaim the coincidental nature of anything and everything in science or theology.

Read the whole thing here.

“A little light pushes away a lot of darkness.” –The Talmud

Two thousand two hundred years ago, Ptolemy, King of Egypt, forced 70 rabbis (at knife point) to translate the text of the Torah into Greek, creating a document that would come to be known as the Septuagint. This work would eventually comprise the “Old” section of the Bible with which we are all familiar. While he succeeded in the extraction of a highly diluted version of the most sacred text of the Jews, he did not manage to procure the methodology that is required to make any sense of it, thus dooming countless translations and many generations to an inherently erroneous, faulty and dermal level of comprehension.

Karl Heinrich Graf and Julius Wellhausen are the two main architects of Biblical “source” criticism, best known for what would later be termed the Documentary Hypothesis: the idea that the text of the Torah is a redacted patchwork of ancient myths and folklore penned by numerous authors. Peering in from the outside, they crafted the hypothesis on five main pillars, one of which suggested that duplicative and repetitious words and passages were evidence of multiple authorship. This is a reasonable supposition if one is unfamiliar with, or uninterested in, the Torah’s rules of exegesis (the collection of critical disciplines used to understand and interpret religious texts).

In fact, later Bible scholars such as Robert Alter and R. N. Whybray held that the text was more a unified whole than not. Alter in particular expressed remorse that these earlier critics did not take the classical Jewish approach more seriously. Why? Because to the Talmudic scholar, the Torah’s repetitions, multiple Divine names, textual divergences and variations of language and style contain a wealth of information. To treat them as mere editorial mishaps is nothing less than tragic. It stands to reason that the Jewish sages of antiquity and the subsequent elucidators, with their assumption of Divine authorship (and thus a unified text), deep familiarity with the material and hundreds of years of crowd-sourced scholarship under their belts, were in the best position to interpret and comprehend these documents.

Read the whole thing here.

There is a tragic figure in the Torah portion this week.  His name is Korach and he was a relative of Moses’ and a great man in his own right.  He had it all and nonetheless decided to challange Moses’ leadership.  It didn’t end well.  Sadly, there are no shortage of examples – ancient and modern – of accomplished and impressive people unexpectedly careening of a cliff late in their career.  Why does this happen?

Tonight’s discussion will focus on this question and offer some practical solutions for dealing with the root challenges – the ones that cause these implosions.  We will see that it is ultimately rooted in a desire to be recognized, valued and loved.  There are few needs in life as important as this.  And yet, as we will see, in order to be truly successful balanced and happy, we must be prepared to give that all up.

This and more tonight at 7:00

Have a great week…

From time immemorial there have been arguments and theories that have been remarkably presented, painstakingly researched and artfully elucidated that have been totally and utterly false.  In many ways the truth about the nature of the world and most of the things in it seem to be woefully slippery and almost seem to recede and change as we get to know them better.

One of these ideas is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.  It is the product of many years of European Bible criticism and scholarship and it concluded that the text of the Torah is a Hodge podge of ancient myths penned by multiple authors and stitched together by an editor at a later point in history.  The hypothesis rests on 5 pillars: multiple names of God, inconsistencies of language and style, contradictions and divergences in the text, duplications and repetitions and composite sections.

If one knew nothing of Jewish tradtion and the methodology of our texts, these 5 challanges might seem quite formidable.  What we will see is that upon closer inspection they all crumble and were in actually built on air.

Why do Iwant to discuss this during this week’s parsha, Shlach?  I’ll leave you to look into that.

All this and more tonight at 7:00 @ the Aish Center

I don’t believe in coincidences but it just so happens that I have been reading a great book by Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman called The Mystical Nature of Light.  It’s a great read and in as much as this week’s Torah portion opens with a description of the Menorah it seemed a fitting topic to cover.  Specifically, I’d like to explore:

• Light and Creation
• Light and skin
• Chanukah and the number 36
• Mixtures of dark and light and the danger of depression
• Light in science

Also, please join us for a wonderful Shavuot program starting this Tuesday evening and going all night.  Here is the schedule

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” –Martha Graham

Of the variety of physiological responsa that human beings exhibit when we receive certain types of information, I find dance to be the most intriguing. Like laughter, it’s not intuitively obvious why motion should sate our desire for expression. It’s certainly possible to process and enjoy music (or other forms of information) without moving at all. How does it help to add kinetics to the experience?

An ’08 article in Scientific American suggested that it might have something to do with stimulating the orbitofrontal cortex and the ventral striatum but concluded that, “Scientists aren’t sure why we like movement so much, but there’s certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest we get a pretty big kick out of it.” Indeed. For those who prefer a less reductive approach, Jewish teachings on the topic may offer a satisfying alternative.

The Jewish mystical tradition holds that there were a series of epochs or pre-universes before our own, each with its own unique characteristics and energy array. (Interestingly, there are analogues to this belief found in theoretical physics.) These dimensions, Kabbalists believe, are alluded to in multiple biblical narratives and are even embedded into various biblical genealogies. The dominant trait of the world that preceded ours was that it was conceptually circular (unlike our own, which is linear). Unlike the linear plane, which is intrinsically fraught with inequality and hierarchy, the circle world was built on equity, harmony and balance. As such, it represented our collective past as well as our ultimate destination. A corollary to this concept would also suggest that all ideas and movements which stress the circle-world qualities are unconsciously tapping into an innate human desire to rectify reality and return to our roots. In this regard, the modern drive for equality in its various forms hearkens back to our primal, collective pre-history. For better or worse, however, the only method we possess to bring this about is through our presently flawed and hierarchical plane of existence. The circle is the future. This is the reason that Jewish tradition has embraced the symbol of the circle dance.

Read the whole thing here.