B'chasdei Hashem, over the past almost 20 years, Beis Mevakesh Lev has produced over 13,300 audio shiurim and over 31,000 written posts, unmatched by any one-person website - all completely free of charge. There are no paywalls or anything else. Now we are turning to you for help so we can continue - any amount will help. Even 99 cents! Thank you to my sweetest and most beloved friends!!!:-)!!
alchehrm@gmail.com
----
If you let a scientist examine a book, he can tell you many interesting things about it: about its physical structure, about the chemical composition of the pages and ink, about the density of the molecules, and about its exact measurements and angles. He can also tell you how many words and letters are in the book, how many times each word and letter appears in it, and what the longest word in it is. But the most important things, he will not be able to tell you. He will not know what the content of the book is, what its message and meaning are, what the depth and subtleties hidden in it are. He will not be able to teach you about how the book affects the reader's inner world, and what experiences and feelings it evokes in him. Maybe he will have something to say on the subject as a person, assuming he knows how to read the language in which the book is written, but not as a scientist; the content and meaning of the book, he will tell you, do not belong to the realm of science, and science is completely blind to their existence. With all due respect to science, it is said of this: the main thing is missing from the book.
And if this is the case with something as simple as a book, what about things that are a little more complex, like man himself, or the world? Is science capable of exhausting all the knowledge about them, or does it miss exactly what is really important?
We all live in the same world, but we perceive it in different ways. We live simultaneously in the public domain, in the realm of experiences shared by everyone, and in the private domain, which includes the experiences unique to each person. If we did not have a significant collection of shared experiences, which we all perceive more or less in the same way, there would be no basis for the existence of human society. Each person would live in an isolated monad of his own, without the possibility of cooperation with others. These experiences, which constitute the public domain, include the empirical information that we receive through the senses. Although we can never know whether others experience sensory information in the same way as us (on the contrary, there are reasons to think not) - but in the test of the practical result, we are able to relate jointly to the empirical world, to investigate it together, and to act in it in a way that promotes society. If we continue with the book from the previous example, every healthy person can distinguish its shape, its measurements, its color, its texture, and the other empirical data related to it, even if he has no idea what is written in the book.
The big question is, what happens beyond those empirical data, accessible to all? Do they constitute all of reality, or are there additional parts of reality, which are no less real, even though not everyone is aware of their existence? What happens if certain people are able to see things that others fail to perceive? Is there really content and a message, depth and meaning in the book, which the talented reader can discern - or is there nothing in the book but material, sheets of paper and ink marks, and all the rest is nothing but imagination and delusion?
Man by nature seeks meaning. Meaning is revealed by seeing the big picture, and identifying structures and patterns within it. While science analyzes reality into small parts to find explanations, religion and philosophy look at the whole, and try to find meanings. The meaning of a text, for example, can only be understood when it is treated as a whole, and the complex structures within it are identified; analyzing a text into its letters, and examining each one separately, will not lead to any meaning. And if that analyst is not aware of the language in which the book is written, or refuses to acknowledge its existence, it will not be possible in any way to prove to him that the book does indeed contain deep, wise and moving descriptions. All he will see before him is a collection of lines and dots.
The objective aspect of reality, the one that all human beings acknowledge, is those lines and dots, those dry, well-defined and quantified data. But most people see much more than that in reality. They see purpose and meaning, justice and morality, aesthetics and beauty. They identify harmony in the world, perceive processes of progress and regression, and distinguish ideas that are realized or fade away. Many people see the world as a whole, which gives meaning to its different parts, and it itself is part of a larger whole, which gives meaning to existence itself. Through these patterns and structures, through those harmonies and ideas, man comes to believe in God, the source of all that exists and its ultimate meaning. This is the message hidden in the book of the world, and although there are many disagreements regarding the exact understanding of that message, and much is hidden from the revealed, there is still much in common between the conclusions of the different readers throughout the generations. And it is not surprising that for such a large-scale creation, there will be different and varied interpretations.
But there are those who are not comfortable with all this. They want to know reality perfectly, and to control it completely. And as dictators do, what they cannot control, they try to destroy. That tyrannical dictator is none other than scientism, the approach that sees science as the be-all and end-all, the only way to acquire knowledge about reality.
The goal of science is to know reality, and to learn to control it. But according to the rules it has set for itself, the only reality it can learn to know is the objective public domain. Only what can be shown to every person, directly or through experiments, is what exists from the point of view of science. The scientist does not rely on personal experiences, no matter how intense and tangible they may be. He always turns to others to get confirmation of his experiences, and only if he receives such sweeping confirmation, does he stamp them with the seal of approval of existence. If man existed alone, there would be no difference for him between dream and reality, between delusion and tangibility, between the private domain and the public domain. Now that there are other people, he can rely on them to delineate the boundary between the two domains. Apparently, a democracy, in which the majority determines what is true and what is not; in fact, a dictatorship, in which the experiences of individuals may be trampled underfoot, and earn their owners contempt to forced hospitalization.
Talk about structures and meanings bothers the scientist, because he is unable to examine them with his tools. It is impossible to put meaning on the table in a laboratory, or to illustrate it through an experiment, which will force the recognition of it on everyone who watches it. There is too much vagueness and ambiguity in everything that is not tangible and solid matter, and these are things that the scientist is unable to tolerate. Therefore, the scientist tries to deny the existence of any phenomenon that is not completely objective, that is not clearly accessible to all human beings. He empties the world of meaning, of content, of depth, of spirituality, of holiness, of magic, of providence, of purpose, of miracles and wonders. Not everyone sees these things, he declares - and therefore they do not exist in reality. The seal of approval of existence will not be stamped on them. What are they then? Imaginations and delusions, feelings that man projects onto the external world, while they exist only inside his head. Science empties the world of all added content, and leaves in it only the dry elements, accessible to all: only the atoms and molecules, which the forces of physics make dance in a blind and endless dance. Only this is scientific, objective, true. All the rest - only in the head. This is scientific reductionism.
Thus, science emptied from the public domain everything that is not accepted by every person, without exception. Everything beyond atoms and molecules, was compressed into the subjective consciousness of man. The next step is to erase it from there as well, and to completely deny the existence of the private domain. Because the situation in which there are consciousnesses that he has no access to and control over, is intolerable from the point of view of the scientist. Therefore, he is now attacking consciousness itself. There is no such thing as a soul, spirit or spirit; all that exists is the brain, with its neuronal and chemical activity. Thoughts, feelings and experiences, all the depth and height in man, are nothing but a collection of chemical secretions, which the brain secretes as the urinary glands secrete urine. "What is love?" the poets asked; hormonal secretion, science answers. "What is morality?" the philosophers asked; a collection of synapses, science answers. "What is holiness?" the religious people asked; an evolutionary defect, science answers. Away with the soul, spirituality, free choice, nobility and honor, away with the sanctity of life and the image of God in man. Not everyone sees them, so they are not scientific and do not exist. You can shout until tomorrow about your intense and earth-shattering existential experiences; until you put them in a place where we can all see and examine them - as far as we are concerned they are only delusions, side effects of blind evolutionary processes. And if you insist otherwise, we will laugh at you, hospitalize you, or burn you at the metaphorical stake, as we did to Thomas Nagel, that philosopher (atheist in his own right), who dared to claim recently that consciousness cannot be explained by current scientific tools.
Are we really interested in a dictatorship of the objective, of which scientism is the prophet and messiah? Are we willing to give up the deepest experiences, the search for meaning and purpose, the holiness and spirituality - just because we cannot expose them to everyone for state approval? Are those who feel the existence and presence of God in their lives, for whom he is no less real than sunlight, supposed to stop believing in him, because some blind people (by choice or by force) fail to see him?
To deny the soul in man, and the meaning in the world, is like denying the content of the book. You will never be able to prove to the (metaphorical) scientist that a certain text contains the meaning that you claim is in it. You will not even be able to teach him the language in which it is written. Prove that this is A and this is B! Prove that this combination of letters constitutes the word you claim, and that this is indeed its meaning! I only see lines and dots here with no connection between them, and that is all that exists. All the rest is imaginations in your head, which you project onto the text. You can get emotional to tears from looking at these ink scribbles, but that does not mean they really say anything. The fact that you also argue among yourselves about exactly what the meaning is here and the message there, and this is a sign that there is no objective truth here. Because only what e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e agrees on - only it exists.
But for a person who knows how to read, all these doubts will not bother him at all. He clearly sees the meaning that arises from the book, and he has no doubt about its existence, even if he is the only person who knows how to read the book and no one believes him. This is how the person sees, that his friend is not just a robot or a collection of moving proteins, and he identifies in him a soul and holiness; and this is how he also distinguishes the deep meaning of the world and the universe, and tries to discover its secret.
Everyone agrees on the minimum, on the lines and dots, on the basic particles. But there is no reason to claim that there is nothing above and beyond the minimum, that the whole does not contain more than the sum of its parts. Combinations of letters, as well as combinations of atoms, create meaning with depth and height, which is not found in the particles themselves. There is no reason why the fear of error and ambiguity, or of disagreements, should cause us to cling jealously to the agreed minimum, and to deny everything beyond it. There is no reason why we should be afraid to read, just because not everyone knows or wants to read.
And in conclusion, a point to think about. He who doubts his personal experiences so much, that he is not willing to accept any of them without the approval of other people - how does he know that those other people really exist? Perhaps they are nothing but another delusion or imagination, the creation of his subconscious, like in a dream? Perhaps solipsism 1] is correct? So if you trust your experiences - why do you need the approval of others? And if you do not trust, how do you know that there are others at all?..
---------
1] Solipsism is the philosophical position that says:
The only thing that can be known to exist with absolute certainty is your own mind / your own consciousness.
Everything else — other people, the physical world, the entire universe outside of your subjective experience — might be illusory, a dream, a simulation, a construct of your mind, etc.
In its strongest (metaphysical) form solipsism claims:
→ Nothing exists except my own mind.
In its weaker (epistemological) form it usually says:
→ I can never be certain that anything besides my own mind exists.
