The Flaws Of Excessive Rationalism - From William James To [להבדיל] Dovid Hamelech

In my experience with people, I have learned that rational arguments for or against religion almost always fail to move anybody. That is why I "religiously" refrain arguing rationally in favor of the rectitude of our belief system. Not that there aren't any rational proofs but in our day and age they just don't work. If someone wants to believe or not believe something, he or she will do so regardless of any proof to the contrary. How many non-believers conducted a thorough rational study of religion, meaning they covered the gamut of all of Jewish thought - Tanach, particularly Iyov with meforshim, medrash, Zohar, Moreh Nevuchim, Emunos Vi-deyos, Kuzari etc. etc.? To date I have met not one.

Frankly - even believers almost never make a thorough study in order to establish their beliefs on firm, rational grounds. They believe because they want to believe for a multitude of possible reasons [it feels good, emotional connection, that is what they are used to, what would life be like without cholent on shabbos, frum girls make great wives, etc. etc. etc.]. Of course, the real, deeper reason is that one's neshama just KNOWS that Hashem and his Torah are true and doesn't need proofs.

People need the experiential and not [primarily] the philosophical. How did Dovid Hamelech put it? טעמו וראו כי טוב השם - TASTE and SEE how good Hashem is. A believer is not particularly troubled by questions because he "saw" the glory of Hashem at Sinai and was "hanging out" in the supernal realms until his soul was cast upon our crude physical earth. Even when someone logically questions whether I am really full after a six course meal at Primo KO, it will not shake my unwavering belief that I am POPPIN'!

After Rav Kook was challenged about evolution and answered what he answered, I am certain [based on his personal diaries] that it in no way "shterred" and diminished the intensity of his mincha that day. He KNEW that the Torah was true and it was just a matter of how everything fits together.

When I was young, intellectual and a voracious reader, I was very impressed with William James in his "The Varieties Of Religious Experience". There he writes rationalism “has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down in words.  But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions.  If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits… Something in you absolutely knows that the result must be truer that any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.”

A popular video on youtube will get MILLIONS of hits. A talmid chochom in Yerushalayim wrote a three volume series on the 13 foundations of our faith [דעת אמונה]. Almost nobody heard of it and fewer people actually troubled themselves to read it [I would guess less than a dozen cover to cover]. We live in the "twitter" generation. It is all about easy, immediate gratification and quick fixes.     

If someone has reasons that he DOESN'T want to believe - a thousand Discovery seminars won't help. He is not willing to part with his phone on shabbos or his gentile girlfriend. What happened on a low mountain 3,300 years ago won't change that. [See Sanhedrin 38b -  אפיקורוס ישראל כ"ש דפקר טפי. So profoundly true. בימים ההם and בזמן הזה.]

So next time the question of the veracity of Torah arises at the Shabbos table or the like - just break out into a moving nigun, like the 4 bavos of the Alter Rebbe. That will "answer" people's questions with much more effectiveness that a learned discourse...

Does that mean that we should completely abandon rationalism and intellectualism? I would argue strongly - no. Just different people need different doses and the results are based much more on emotion that logic.

How paradoxical...:-).

Am I saying that keeping Torah is just supposed to be a fuzzy-feel-good type of experience? Chas Vi-shalom. Being a real Jew is constant mesirus nefesh in forgoing forbidden thoughts, sights, words, deeds and actions. It means controlling and curbing one's appetite for food, sleep and other pleasures. It means giving of oneself and one's money [OUCH] because that is what Hashem commanded. In a word, being a Torah-true Jew is PERSISTENT, HARD WORK.

My major point [or "thesis" if I want to use a fancier word] is that generally, rationalism and intellectualism just don't fly in our world. 

טעמו וראו כי טוב השם



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