Religion, Rationality, and a letter to a rabbi in response to a phone call. [Jan. 15th, 2009|06:38 pm] Psy-Kosh Okay, a bit of background: A while back, the head of a chasidic sect (not Lubavitch, the Rebbe of a different group) was apparently visiting in the area. Anyways, bunch of people (including my parents) went to get blessings from him blah blah blah...



So, apparently when they spoke to him and they had mentioned me, he requested to meet me. Anyways, so my parents asked if I would come. me: "fine..."



Anyways, met him, etc etc, do I do this or that, eventually I explained that the issue is that I'm an unbeliever, blah blah... he was nice, but used some rather poor argments.



Fast forward about half a year. It was thanksgiving evening, we were watching some movie we rented, and we get a call. Turns out to be some rabbi that represents/works for this Rebbe, specifically wanted me, started telling me random stuff about how I have the potential to be a great scholar, blah blah blah. I politely explained him why that was unlikely. (The whole me being an atheist and so on thing..) aaanyways, he managed to get out of me a promise to email him and discuss the issues.



I decided to carefully write a rather comprehensive letter, detailing my basic views and to respond to some of the things he said on the phone. I got a bit technical, but at least what I tried to do was to make it as clear as possible. I didn't want to simply impress with a wall of confusing stuff, but to communicate and argue about actual ideas. Took me a bit to write the letter, then I asked a couple people to look over it just to see if it was comprehensible (not if they agreed with what I was saying, but I simply wanted to verify whether I was at all succeeding in communicating what I was trying to communicate) Anyways, so it was about two weeks or so after thanksgiving when I finally sent the letter. I have yet to see a reply, and I took a while writing it, so why waste that effort? Might as well let others read it too, so here it is:







Hello. First, well, I wish to apologize, I forgot to write down the name of the specific person that called me, and I don't know if this address goes straight to that person, or is used by a group of people in your organization, so if I say stuff like "you said", and the person reading this isn't the specific person that called me, well, that's the explanation.



Second, I'd like to apologize again, this time for the lateness of this reply. First it took me a little while to write it. But then I wasn't sure how well I was communicating that which I wished to communicate, so I printed it up and asked some people to read it over. Not to try to convince them, but simply to see if they managed to understand what I was saying. (That is, if I managed to communicate the relevant concepts.) Had to wait a bit for all of them to get back to me, then I took a little longer making a few corrections and so on...



Well, let's see, where to begin... You had said on the phone that I should once again start putting on tefilin regularly and so on, and that I had the potential to be a great Torah scholar. (Why do you think that, anyways?)

As I indicated, the fact that I'm an atheist might be at least a slight impediment to that. :)



Anyways, you'd indicated I should give some of my reasons in an email and we could discuss it.



I may as well start with what I consider an important point. In fact, this is, to me, the central issue. Not the only one, but to me this is the major primary issue. Basically my attitude here is that if you can't adequately and intelligently address this matter, there'd be little point in continuing this conversation. The specific issue is the matter of faith itself.



Allow me to clarify: It would perhaps be more correct to describe myself as an afaithist rather than an atheist. Where by faith I mean the whole notion of "belief without or in spite of rational evidence is somehow a useful and virtuous way to arrive at truth, and further, real doubt or disbelief is immoral" and all the related cluster of concepts. If you use the word "faith" in a different way, well, it's not the word that's really at issue, but the concepts I'm trying to refer to. Now, I'd like to note something: It isn't just "faith in god" that I object to, but _faith itself_. (In other words, the exact same reasoning applies to rejecting Soviet style communism, with faith in "The Party", Nazism with faith in the fuhrer, etc... Obviously, those are rejectable on moral grounds too. I was simply here clarifying that I have far more objection to the idea of faith than to the idea of god, which, to me is more of almost an incidental "oh, by the way, looking at the evidence, it seem that no such being, at least nothing resembling the entity Judaism or most other religions I've heard of describe, actually exists" style matter, while I have serious revulsion at the idea of faith as described above.)



Now, perhaps I ought give some justification for this. (In other words, give some of the more detailed aspects of this, that, if you want to convince me, you'll need to address.)



Let's start like this: What is a belief or a set of beliefs? It's simply a map of reality. I believe I am sitting on a chair right now, I believe there's a computer in front of me, I believe the earth is, to the extent that time exists (there're certain interesting models of physics which completely remove time from the equations, but I digress), it is approximately 4.5 billion years old. I believe that 1 + 1 = 2, etc etc etc... Some of my beliefs may be accurate, some may be inaccurate.



Does that all make sense so far? (If I was unclear on something, or it otherwise doesn't make sense, let me know. I don't want my poor communications skills, to the extent that they are poor, to get in the way of this.)



So, now, let's try thinking this through:



I desire to believe things that are true, and disbelieve things that are false. I desire my map of reality to be as accurate as possible, for I am curious.



This is not my only desire, but it is certainly one of them, and having an accurate map of reality is also useful for doing other stuff.



Let us examine this in more detail



If, say, a slice of pizza in front of me has mushrooms on it, I desire to believe it has mushrooms on it. If it does not have mushrooms, then I desire to believe it does not have mushrooms.



And if there is, in fact, no slice of pizza in front of me in the first place, then I desire to believe that there is no slice of pizza in front of me.



In other words, I desire my beliefs to be reliably correlated with reality, as best as possible.



Ideally, given thus, one would simply take all the information they have, put it in front of them and say "given all this, what is the best guess(es) I can make about the world? To the extent that my conclusions are less than certain, let me track that uncertainty and attempt to narrow it further by accumulating more information."



More generally, how can one endeavor to ensure that there is correlation between their beliefs and reality?



Well, where would reliable correlation come from? Essentially we would need to ensure at least one of these options are true: a certain aspect of reality _causes_, directly or indirectly, a belief that is a reflection of that aspect. Alternately, aspect of reality A causes aspect of reality B _and_ belief about aspect of reality B. Finally, we have the option of belief in B itself causing B to be true. This last one is one an option that, for now, I will ignore as a nonstarter. (Unless you wish to consider the possibility that, say, belief in God would _cause_ God to exist, and non belief would _cause_ God to not exist. I do not consider this model plausible, although I have heard of some mystics that do consider it. Again, for now I will assume that the general case is that a belief doesn't neccessarally _cause_ itself to be true.)



(There're subtleties to all this, of course. The ability to take all the information into account fully in practice is limited by resources (time, energy, computational, etc...)



Now, given all this... Where could there possibly be room for faith? This line of reasoning would seem to me to annihilate the notion of faith, rendering it as silly nonsense. What should one believe given all this? Simply whatever their best effort information collection/reasoning leads them to. Yes, fully acknowledging human limitations and attempting to work around them or simply insert (ideally quantitative) representations of uncertainty. But to simply instead consider faith, to say "no matter what I observe in reality, I will simply believe what I believe, for I have faith" is to sever the link between belief and reality, and thus almost ensure failure in the endeavor.



Similarly, where is there room for the notion of one "choosing what to believe"? To say one must simply choose what to believe is to suggest a criteria for belief _other_ than "what is the best guess based on the available data?"



For me, all of the above more or less destroys the notion of faith, reveals the notion of faith to be a confusion rather than a valid idea. Faith, ultimately, forbids me from ever saying "oops, my deeply held beliefs turned out to actually be wrong. I'd better simply admit that I'm wrong and actually try to figure out the correct answer."

I do not wish to be forbidden from ever admitting to a (fundamental) mistake.



Before I continue though, I'd like to briefly discuss something which I hinted at here with mentions of quantitative representations of uncertainty, of computation, and so on. Specifically, is there a proper way to manage uncertainty, to update ones beliefs in light of new evidence?



Yes. There are multiple theorems which mathematically show that the only reasonable option for representing subjective uncertainty are the axioms of probability. Cox's theorem is one, there're also the "dutch book"/coherence arguments and the related vulnerability proofs which actually construct both probability and decision theory all at once.



This notion, incidentally, that subjective uncertainty = probability is known as the Bayesian view of probability and statistics. Basically, I wanted to emphasize that even if one doesn't know the math (or if one does know the math, but the relevant computations are not really, in practice, computable), given a certain piece of evidence, there is a specific correct way to update ones beliefs in light of that evidence.



I may as well try to give an intuitive notion of what Bayesian evidence is. The basic idea is that a certain piece of evidence E favors hypothesis A more strongly than hypothesis B if A places a greater likelihood of E being observed than B does. (Specifically, the ratio of those likelihoods basically is how one modifies the odds one assigns to A and B. If you'd like, I could go a bit more into the math of this, but that probably isn't needed right now.)



Consider again the previous example with the pizza. What's one way to find out? Well, I could look at the slice of pizza and see if there are mushrooms on it. Why does this help? Because the pattern of photons entering my eye would be different depending on if there was or wasn't mushrooms to be seen, so updating my belief in the topping of the pizza based on what I see when I look at the pizza is valid. ie, if there had not been mushrooms, I would have expected to not see mushrooms, so if I do see mushrooms, it supports the notion that the pizza has mushrooms on it.



See? Simple, obvious, and intuitive. The subtleties come in when one starts poking around with the actual math of this stuff and with the issue of the "prior."



Perhaps this is what I ought discuss next, especially since it leads into a discussion of Occam's Razor, which is definately something I'd like to bring up.

I'm not sure how obvious this was, though I may have hinted at it, but the techniques of Bayesian Inference basically operate by having a set of prior beliefs, that is, confidence levels in various hypothesies. Then, upon encountering new info, combining that, using the mathematics of probability, with ones prior beliefs to produce the new levels of belief.



So, on obvious question would be "what priors ought one start with?"



This is an important and nontrivial question. There're several ways of addressing it, many of which differ in their mathematical details but are inspired by and have in common the notion of Occam's razor.



Have you heard of it? There're several ways to phrase the idea, but the basic notion is "all else being equal, give preference to the simpler hypothesies" or "the simplest hypothesis that is consistent with the data is the one most likely to be true."



Now, rather than merely assert this principle, to be taken as a matter of, ahem, faith, I'd like to try to actually show why I think it's valid. That is, I'd like to try to communicate what I consider the core reasons behind trusting it.



Imagine I was flipping a fair coin, and I was following the rule that if it comes up heads the first time, I stop. If it comes up tails, I flip it again and then stop.



So there are three possible outcomes, right? H, TH, TT, correct? (Where H is for heads and T for tails)



Now, let's say in advance I was trying to make a prediction about what was going to happen. How much relative belief should I place in the H hypothesis vs the TH hypothesis?



I say I should have rather more belief (in fact, in this specific example it would be exactly twice as much) in the H hypothesis.



Why? Because I have no particular reason to believe more in the first flip coming up heads or tails. However, the second option is more specific. That is, _IN ADDITION_ to the first flip coming up tails, I would be claiming that the second flip comes up heads.



This example gives the basic spirit of the idea. Each additional thing that would need to be "just so", that is, each additional assumption that a hypothesis makes ought to be viewed as a burden, an additional piece of belief that needs to be justified.



ie, if you have a hypothesis that claims A AND B AND C are all true, that's almost certainly less likely than simply claiming that A is true and uncertainty about the rest. Each additional detail required is an additional thing that can go wrong. Now, later evidence may end up being so strongly in favor of a somewhat complex hypothesis as opposed to a certain simple hypothesis that it overcomes this and justifies a belief in the more complex hypothesis.

This is the basic essence of it.



Another way to think about it: Imagine I dropped a weight and noticed how long it took to fall, etc etc etc. And then I considered the following question: "why did it fall like that?"



Well, I could perhaps try to explain it by saying "A witch did it!"

It may even seem on the surface like it's a simpler explanation than all those complicated physics explanations science type people talk about.



But it's not. In fact, it's, in a sense, a non explanation.



What do I mean by this? Simply ask this question: "A witch did _WHAT_?"



More to the point, let's say I was trying to write a computer program to simulate the path the weight took over time.



I might notice that adding anything about witches to the program doesn't help at all... it simply doesn't in any make any predictions, doesn't actually describe in any way what happened. But, I may notice that no matter what hypothesis I use, having part of my program square the amount of time that has passed actually helps in computing this. So my hypothesis perhaps should involve something like that mathematical operation, but has no need of witches.

ie, even if I consider the "witch" hypothesis... I still have to tack on all the physics stuff to actually make a complete hypothesis. So the "witch" hypothesis isn't simpler, it just has an extra bit dangling from the rest of the theory, an extra bit that doesn't add anything.



Basically, when describing a hypothesis in detail, each additional AND in the assumptions should be considered a bad thing, and "punished" by having a lower belief in the hypothesis, at least initially.



Now, there are a few subtleties I'm kind of glossing over here. There're certain ambiguities in exactly how to compute the complexity of a hypothesis, but generally keeping this notion in mind can help distinguish between hypothesis that are significantly different complexitywise or hypothesies in which one hypothesis has to contain the entirety of the other, plus contains something extra in addition to that.



Does this make sense? Not just as a pile of words, but have I successfully communicated some of the intuitions behind the idea?



Here's a more mathematical way of looking at it: P(A AND B) <= P(A)

(Not sure if that'll help, but if you happen to be familiar with the mathematics of probability, that statement might help clarify what I'm saying)



Now, consider: effectively you're asking me to believe, _in addition_ to all the physics and so on stuff, the following: "a fundumental yet intelligent entity (ie, God), as an act of will, chose those principles to be true, willed this reality into existance." First, I'd like to note that things like intelligent willful entities are _COMPLICATED_, not simple. If God is the sort of thing that _choses_ this and not that, etc etc etc, that's a complicated entity with lots of structure, no?



(I have heard of the kabbalistic notion that HaShem is "pashut", but I don't buy that. Pashut things don't have complex structure, don't say "okay, I'll chose to make a universe like this _instead_ of a universe like that, I will chose specifically human forms like this rather than forms like that, I choose they should behave this way instead of that" etc etc etc... the more specific details it outputs as a whole, the more structure is involved.



Now, if the belief was "HaShem made all possible universes in all permutations" or something like that, then perhaps the "pashut" notion would hold some water. But that would really correspond at all to the claims the Torah makes, now would it? The notion that HaShem made specific decisions, chose how the universe should be, chose "this and not that" even though He, in some sense, "could have" done it a different way, could have done it any way. But I digress...)



Anyways, in addition to tacking on to the rest of our knowledge the belief that it was all caused by a supreme intelligent willful being as, well, an act of will, you ask me to further believe that this entity has communicated with humanity _AND_ has chosen a specific subset of humanity _AND_ we (Jews) happen to be that subset _AND_ that there's specific things the supreme being wants us to do and not do _AND_ the document that encodes that communication starts with the letter Bet _AND_ the next letter is... etc etc... _AND_ the supreme being is good and loving _AND_ etc etc etc etc...



That's a whole lot of "AND"s. Therefore I ought to start by placing a very low starting credence on it compared to simpler hypothesies.



(Incidentally, I don't apply these ideas to just religion. For example, I also reject the specific view/component of quantum mechanics known as the "collapse postulate" since it actually doesn't add anything at all to QM. No, I take that back. It adds confusion and nonsense. But it doesn't really solve any mysteries, doesn't actually explain anything that we can't explain without that one particular part. Now, the implications of rejecting that specific part of QM are interesting, but from the important thing for the sake of this discussion is that it simplifies the theory without removing any predictive ability.)



Anyways, all of the above are really the fundamental things, primarily the whole bit about me rejecting the notion of faith itself, and the Occam's razor business showing why, otherwise, religion gets a very low prior belief.



Even though the above represents the primary fundamental thing that, if you want to convince me, you need to address, I will at least respond now to the couple of things you mentioned on the phone. Mainly just so you don't think I'm trying to avoid the issue by ignoring your arguments and trying to hide behind a big pile of words instead. :)



First, you tried to use the argument that the Torah is one of the, if not the most translated, commented, written about, and so on books in all of history.

There're several responses I might make to that. A quick "smug" reply might be "perhaps, but even if so, think how much time it's had. Even in the few years since it was written, the Harry Potter books have been widely translated. Perhaps I ought go to a spiritual quest to find the Hogwarts School?"



However, while responding like that and merely stopping there may be amusing to me, it doesn't fully address all the fundamental reasons of _why_ that argument breaks down, why it doesn't help, so here I will do a rather more considered analysis of it.



So, to consider that argument, I have to ask "well, what could I learn from this fact?"



And for that question, I should ask "_why_ has the Torah been so translated, commented upon, etc etc etc."



The answer to that, as near as I can make out, is "because lots of people believe that it represents truth" and perhaps also (though not as much) "even those that don't would note that since many people through history have believed it, it has influenced history significantly, so it's useful to look at what people believed"

So, really your argument there comes down to telling me that I should perhaps believe it simply because so many other people believe it. That is, "if so many other people believe it, it's probably true."



This then, is the notion that I must address to address your argument. First, I will propose some quick counterexamples to quickly show that, on the surface, there clearly are things wrong with your argument here :



"More people believe in Christianity than Judaism. Perhaps you suggest I ought become a Christian then?"

"Although not as many, think how many people believe that Elvis is alive, claim to have seen him at their local gas station or whatever."

"In the past many people believed everything in the universe revolved in circles around the earth."

And, of course, "over the years there have been many antisemites. If we are to use this logic, then would it not imply that the fact that many people have believed that Jews are evil means that we really are?"



_CLEARLY_ the fact that many people believe something does _NOT_ imply that thing is true. I could stop here, but still, doing that might just be me avoiding the issue of why it is then that so many people believe in the validitiy of the Torah or in God or whatever.

So, let's probe that issue a bit more deeply:



Imagine if person A believes some strange idea.



Let's say B thinks A is smart, so B, upon finding out A believes it, starts believing it too. C, seeing that both A and B believe it, starts believing it too, same with D and E. By the time we get to F, B, C, and D's belief has been strengthended by the fact that they've noticed that all those other people are starting to believe it too. Finally, Z comes along and says "wait, this doesn't make sense. Why do you believe what you believe?" And almost everyone simply just points at everyone else and says "because they believe it too."



Clearly something went very wrong here. You can't say "so many people believe it" as a valid argument in this cause _because_ the only one other than Z that actually considered the issue was A. Everyone else was effectively just "copying" the belief. So the fact that many people believed it doesn't actually change anything, doesn't really tell us anything new. (Well, may tell us a bit about gullibility... :))



Now, if I know a lot of people who actually consider deeply an issue, think rationally and independantly have concluded, without connection to the fact that other people believe something that they themselves believe it, then I may be justified in saying (at least to myself) that it may be an idea worth considering.

But religion doesn't really work like that. It _explicitly_ makes a virtue of believing, of not having true doubt. (True doubt being doubt that could go _either way_... that is, that there's a nontrivial chance that by the end of it you end up disbelieving, rather than the more popular false doubt, where one is simply looking for excuses/rationalizations to believe what they already believe)



There's plenty of, say, in Judaism, "if you believe in God and the Torah you're good, but if you disbelieve, you are, simply due to that disbelief, bad and will be punished by God. (or, if still a kid, perhaps your parents or teachers. Or, in the old days or in some places, whether or not you're a kid.)" Religious parents raise their kids to believe this stuff even before the kids know what it is.



The point is, with religion, there's been plenty of "believe or else", right? Or, more generally, the reason that many people believe are reasons _OTHER_ than having rationally considered it. Therefore, the fact that many people believe it doesn't mean much since the specific cause of their belief in this matter isn't something really correlated to whether or not it's actually true or not. It's often based on faith, which, as I argued above, is not in any way a useful way to actually get at the actual truth of things.



Let's see, what else did you say on the phone? Oh yeah, two other things:

First, you used the argument that there were hidden prophesies in the Torah, that it predicted things like World War 2.



The essense of my response is "no it didn't."



If you're talking about Torah Codes type stuff, last I heard, it's been shown that you can do that sort of thing with pretty much any large book.



How many of these predictions were found in advance? I claim that it's more a case of looking for patterns, then squinting and saying "well, is there _any_ historical event that we can compare this to, especially if we squeeze this metaphor, stretch that interpretation, etc?"



The problem with finding prophesies "after the fact" is that it's like shooting an arrow at a wall, and then painting a target around the arrow. It's not exactly an achievment to hit the bullseye if the bullseye was put in _after_ the arrow hit.



Not to mention the related issue of remembering the "prophesies" that came true and ignoring the rest.



Sure, if you keep looking at different stuff in the Torah and the set of all historical things that have actually happened, you'll probably find _some_ set of things that can pair up, especially if you're willing to be creative in "interpreting the metaphors."

But that's hardly the most rigorous of methods.



Finally, you said that the Zohar claimed that people disbelieve simply because they feel guilt about having spoiled their connection with God, so they try to rationalize that guilt away.



If nothing else, that was a profoundly rude response. Almost comically rude. The type of thing that one imagines jokes about: "You're in denial." "No I'm not." "See?"



It's basically a complete and utter dismissal of even the possibility that I may have actual reasons (however flawed) for thinking as I do.

Of course, I must right away counter what I'm saying here by admitting that even if something is rude, that does not make it false. The truth isn't necessarally polite, it merely is true.



However, _now_, in this email, I've given you some of my thinking on it. Even with regards to your other arguments, I carefully responded to them. I ask that you do the same and actually address the fundamental issues I have raised (most importantly the whole "faith" thing itself) or admit plainly that you cannot. I ask you do not do what other rabbis have done and basically utterly ignore it, simply saying "oh, that's just mind games, you're just rationalizing, you just have to choose to believe the proper thing". especially in light of the fact that I (hopefully clearly) explained why I consider the notion of "choosing to believe" as completely absurd.



One last thing. I do actually understand that you mean well, that you probably believe something to the effect of "a Jew who rejects the Torah and the idea of God has a suffering neshama" or something to that effect, but please recognize that I do _not_ believe this. If you wish to convince me, then you're going to have to use arguments that don't depend on me already believing these things. Further, those arguments should be stronger than those I've thus far seen and already found to be flawed.