Bias and Rationality

In the debate between believers and skeptics, each side often accuses the other of holding their positions for reasons other than the unassailable rationality of their worldview. To be blunt, each side accuses the other of holding the position they do due to a failure of character. The skeptic accuses the believer of being intellectually lazy and dishonest, of holding onto his belief because it is comforting, or because of his biases and upbringing, or because he has too much invested in his religion, or, most often of all, because the believer has simply never given his beliefs any real thought. The believer accuses the skeptic of denying the existence of God and the truth of his religion because the skeptic is angry at God, or because he has too much invested in being a non-believer, or, most often, because by denying God and religion the skeptic is then free to live a amoral hedonistic lifestyle.

It is interesting to note that the believer’s accusation is more vicious than the skeptics’ equivalent. The skeptic accuses the believer of wanting to hold onto his culturally-indoctrinated beliefs and of never bothering to challenge beliefs that he was taught to regard as self-evident. We all have unexamined beliefs, and most of us have neither the time nor the interest to investigate them all. You might even think of it as pragmatic laziness. While unexamined beliefs may leave one with an inaccurate perception of reality, assuming that the world is as our culture teaches us it is is not a moral failing.

The believer on the other hand accuses the skeptic of being an amoral hedonist, blinded to the Divine Truth by his base desires. What’s more, this is not the empirical consensus of the believing community, arrived at through their interactions with skeptics. It is instead a religious dogma that dictates only an immoral person would deny God’s existence. It can be found in sayings and anecdotes: One must be a slave to God or to his desires; There are no kashyos, only teirutzim. The skeptic, then, is a disgusting person who wallows in the base fleshly pleasures of the material world and tries to fool himself into believing there is no God so that he can indulge himself without feeling guilty. Such a person should be shunned, cast out of the community to protect the innocent and pious, and kept away from our precious impressionable children.

As insulting as the believer’s characterization of the skeptic’s motives is, I thought that it might be prudent to investigate whether the core claim has any merit. Stripped of its invective, the believer’s accusation is that the skeptic rejects God and religion not because he has come to the conclusion through rational inquiry that God doesn’t exist, but because he desires to do things which if God existed would be unwise. Rejecting God is therefore a direct result of the skeptic’s desires and a necessary step for his fulfillment of those desires.

In this conception of the skeptic’s motivation, the skeptic’s method of reaching conclusions mirrors that of the believer. The believer accepts on faith that God exists, and then rationalizes that belief. The skeptic “accepts on faith” that his desires should be fulfilled, and then rationalizes away God. (All right, it’s a little more subtle than that, as the claim is usually that the skeptic’s desires are unconsciously influencing him rather than an explicit statement that his desires must be fulfilled, but the parallel stands.)

Is there any merit to this? Might my desires be influencing me and blinding me to the existence of God and the Truth of Judaism?

I like to think of myself as rational, but I am all too aware that people, as a species, are not nearly as rational as we think we are. We all like to think that we’re the exception, but objectively I must admit that I’m probably not. While I was in school from time to time professors would present examples of how our minds trick us. In the back of my mind I always assumed that I would be able to see through the trick, that I was in some way superior to the plebes who suffered from the illusions of their own minds. Again and again, I was dismayed to find that I was as susceptible as anyone else.

Objectively, then, I cannot claim that I am wholly rational. As much as I may try to approach everything rationally, inevitably I am limited by the same human frailties as everyone else. I have my biases and preconceptions, my culturally-influenced worldview, and yes, my desires.

So, is my rejection of God’s existence wholly rational?

Surprisingly, I have to conclude that it’s not.

This is not to say that it is irrational. I think I have a sound rational basis for my skepticism. But had I been perfectly happy with all aspects of frum life, I would never have gone this route. My rejection of Judaism’s truth-claims does not stem wholly from a dispassionate evaluation of the religion, but from a base that includes a distaste for certain communal norms and the related desire to disregard them. This was one of the many factors that contributed to my skeptical stance, and I cannot disregard the likelihood that it influences my judgment.

Does this mean my conclusions are invalid? Not at all. To quote Philip K. Dick, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” Do my biases, my “desires,” lead me to favor certain conclusions? Yes. Does that mean that those conclusions are wrong? No. I try to remain aware of my biases and to examine all arguments objectively, even though my instinctive reaction may be to dismiss theistic arguments out of hand. What we must all remember, believer and skeptic alike, is that whatever our desires, whatever our biases, reality is what it is. Brute facts are care nothing for our desires. And it is upon the facts that we must base our conclusions.

So while I didn’t arrive at my current worldview wholly through dispassionate rational inquiry, I think I am justified in rejecting the believer’s characterization of the skeptic’s motives. My conclusions, while undoubtedly influenced by my desires and biases, do not rest upon them but upon the facts.

Live and Let Live

Every now and then I get into theological debates with friends or family members. It never really goes anywhere, and I never push things past a certain point (which differs depending on whom I’m talking to), but it’s made me think. Do I really want to convince any of these people that I’m right?

I’ve decided the answer is no. I don’t see that “deconverting” the people in my life would be a good thing. It almost certainly wouldn’t make them any happier, and for many of them convincing them that their religious beliefs are wrong would be devastating. So why argue with them? The truth is that I argue mostly because it’s fun or because I found something someone said annoying. But if I were to give my debates a deeper meaning, they’re an attempt to get these people to acknowledge that I might be right.

Religious people are convinced that they are absolutely right and anyone who disagrees with the tenets of their religion is absolutely wrong. While I have no interest in convincing anyone that they should abandon their religion, I would like to convince them that maybe it isn’t such a sure thing. I’d like them to acknowledge the possibility that their beliefs are mistaken than that there are good reasons why someone would disagree with them.

Once we reach the point where we’re not dealing in absolutes, perhaps we can go one step further and agree that we can each have our own worldview without imposing moral values on those views. Perhaps we can agree to live and let live.

There are some people out there who want atheism to spread, who hope for the day when religious beliefs will have the same status as the belief the world is flat. I’m not interested in convincing people. I don’t care if belief is good or bad for humanity. I don’t care if universal rationalism would make the world a better place. In the big picture, it just doesn’t matter.

I figure I’ll be around for about a century, give or take. While I’m alive I’d just like to be reasonably comfortable and happy and for other people to let me be. (I realize that I’m very fortunate to live in a time and place where I can have both.) Further than that, I don’t care. As long as it doesn’t adversely affect me, if someone wants to believe in an invisible man in the sky, that’s fine with me. Just don’t bother me because I don’t.

I’m Psychic!

This morning as I walked to my car I idly recalled how once as a teenager I had been waiting in the car for my mother while she ran into a store. The meter she had parked by ran out, and a traffic cop wrote a ticket and stuck it on the windshield as I watched.

As I got closer to my car, I noticed an orange envelope under windshield wiper. The city cleans the streets here on Mondays and Tuesdays, and I had accidentally parked on the wrong side of the street last night. I’d gotten my first parking ticket.

This must mean I have precognitive abilities, right? I was thinking about an incident involving a parking ticket, and then I discovered my car had been ticketed. I’m psychic!

Except… I’m not entirely sure whether I recalled the story before or after I noticed the ticket on my car. And then there are all the other times I’ve thought about incidents involving parking tickets when I didn’t get a ticket. I used to work for a place where part of my job was dealing with the company’s parking tickets. Back then, I thought about parking tickets all the time. But… I didn’t have a car then. So it doesn’t count, right? This can’t have just been a coincidence. It’s too weird. It’s spooky.

No, I’m sure of it. I’m psychic!

Growing Up Different

Growing up in the Yeshivish world, it seemed that Europe, the alte heim remembered warmly in stories, the land where the pious Judaism of our forefathers once flourished, was an area that extended from Russia in the East to Lithuania in the North, Hungary in the South, and Poland to the West. (Not that I had a great grasp of geography as kid. Far from it.) The stories that were told, from those about the great tzadikim we were to emulate to those about the simple folk we were to identify with, all took place in small patch of Central and Eastern Europe. The names of the towns, the Yiddish the characters spoke, the social structure, all had their roots in the shtetl.

I identified with none of it. I heard no stories at home about Poland or Russia. No family tales of the poretz, the czar, the bitter winters and rapacious peasants. Nor was there any reason I should. My family was from farther west, from a place that, when it came up at all, was the source of the smart-aleky Maskil in older stories and of unspeakable horror in those from the mid-20th century.

All four of my grandparents grew up in Germany, in places like Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Main. I have photographs of my great-grandfathers in their uniforms, circa 1914. I know very little about their service, and it’s likely they were drafted rather than volunteers, but they fought for Germany. More than one of my great-great-uncles died in France in the Kaiser’s service, fighting for a country he thought of as his own. One, a doctor living in California, voluntarily returned to Germany to serve his country.

When WWI ended and Germany was forced to cede its eastern lands to the newly reconstituted Poland, one of my great grandfathers, who had been living just across the new Polish border, moved west to Berlin rather than trade his German citizenship for a Polish one. Unlike the oppressed Jews of Eastern Europe (and Poland, Hungary, etc. which I’ll throw in with Eastern countries for simplicities sake), German Jews saw themselves as full members of the German nation.

The Jews of Eastern Europe were, for the most part, poor, oppressed, and not very patriotic – often because they weren’t allowed the privileges of citizens. Western Europe was a very different place.

These differences expressed themselves in ways other than just patriotism. Jews in the West tended to be wealthier and better-educated than their Eastern brethren, a difference which accounts for the popularity of cholent in Eastern Europe and its absence from the West. This dish, which many frum people today consider their Shabbos incomplete without, was unknown in Germany. While cholent today may be expensive, it was originally a relatively cheap stew made with potatoes, beans, and a bit of meat and bones for flavor. Tasty and filling, it was the perfect Shabbos dish for people without a lot to spend. The richer Jews of the West had chickens and meat for Shabbos. My father first tasted cholent when he went away to yeshiva for bais medrash.

There are also differences in hashkafa and minhagim. In general, most of the kaballah-inspired minhagim prevalent among Eastern European Jews are not part of the German experience. My family doesn’t make upsherins, we don’t wave a chicken over our heads before Yom Kippur, and we don’t wear a kittel at the seder. At my wedding (and my parents’ and my siblings’) I didn’t wear a kittel, I didn’t wear a torn coat, and I didn’t untie my shoes or take off my gold cufflinks. My wife and I stood under the chuppah wearing a tallis over our heads and facing away from the audience.

Most of my classmates were descendants of the Eastern Europeans who have come to dominate American Orthodoxy. (So much so, that one is either a chassid or a litvak. In common usage in the yeshivish and chassidsh worlds, there are no other categories.) I was different from them. Not very different – we were all from middle-to-right-wing Orthodox homes. But I was different in that I didn’t personally identify with stories of Eastern European figures. To my classmates, these characters were their alter zaides. I didn’t even have a zaidy. I called my grandfather “Opa,” German for Grandpa. Underscoring the difference even more, my family did things differently than my friends did, differently than I was taught in school.

Like all yeshivish kids, I learned the Yiddish sing-song about the Seder. “Tatty comes home from shul and puts on his kittel…” Mine didn’t.

I learned to say the Ma Nishtana in Yiddish. My mother’s parents, at whose home we spent Pesach when I was little, spoke fluent German and could understand Yiddish, but no one in my family spoke Yiddish.

Before Yom Kippur I learned in school how we shlug kaporos. At home, I heard how we didn’t shlug kaporos, and could you imagine actually taking a chicken and swinging it over your head?!

Then there’s the best one of all. You must wait six hours between milchig and fleishig (always said that way, even though no one waits between milk and meat, only between meat and milk). This minhag is taught as part of hilchos kashrus. Except my family only waits three.

For me, the illusion of a monolithic mesorah promulgated by the Yeshivish world never had a chance to take hold. Sure, everyone knows that there are people out there who only wait three hours, or who wear taleisim before they’re married. But for most it’s not something they notice. It’s one thing if one or two of your friends do things a little differently than you do. It’s another when nearly everyone does things differently than you do.

I think this may be another small ingredient in my path to religious skepticism. Seeing what I was taught as normative in school disregarded by my family in practice – disregarded because no one in the family had ever done these things - taught me that not everything I learned was a tradition stretching back to God at Har Sinai.

Selective Skeptical Debate – Or, Pushing Emotional Buttons

Over Yom Tov I found myself drawn into a theological debate with my brother-in-law. He is the ‘inspired’ type: he finds meaning in everything and marvels at the wonders of Hashem. For some reason he always wants to know my opinion on everything, which while flattering, leaves me in an uncomfortable position when he is asking about religion. I really prefer not to burst his bubbles, but he insists on talking about theology, and he always seems so disappointed when I poke holes in his arguments.

This time the discussion grew to include the whole family. While I think I explained my position well, it got me thinking. Why did I respond to him? Why did I allow him to draw in other family members, and why did I feel the need to explain myself to them? And while I don’t normally have drawn-out theological discussions at the table, I often give in to the urge to critique divrie torah and to challenge statements about religion that I find questionable. Why do I do this? It puts me in situations like arguing theology with my in-laws. Is it an urge to challenge irrationality wherever I encounter it?

There’s a guy I know, a friend of a friend, who is studying to be an acupuncturist. Whenever I see him the conversation always turns eventually to the “ancient Chinese” techniques that he is studying and how they are superior to modern medicine. For example, he once claimed that acupuncture is superior because practitioners take into account what the season is, while medical doctors will prescribe the same medications without regard to the time of year. He discounts the many studies that have shown acupuncture to be effective mostly for pain management, and then only equally effective to random placement of needles. He believes it works for the traditional reason, redirecting Chi, and that it can cure nearly anything.

While I think his beliefs about acupuncture are irrational, I’ve never challenged him. I just grit my teeth and do my best to ignore his statements. He has a lot invested in acupuncture, and he is never going to agree with me that “ancient” and “Chinese” do not automatically equal profound knowledge superior to modern science. So why bother challenging him and getting him upset?

Yet his beliefs about acupuncture are very similar to religious beliefs. He has an irrational belief in undetectable energy because an ancient source says that it is so, and he discounts the evidence provided by science that shows this probably isn’t true. So why do I respond to religious claims and ignore the acupuncturist?

The answer, of course, is that I don’t really care whether or not acupuncture is true. I think it isn’t, and so won’t use it. But if studies came out that showed I was wrong and acupuncture really worked by affecting Chi it wouldn’t really make a difference in my life. I just don’t care enough about acupuncture to make the discomfort of offending someone worthwhile.

Religion, on the other hand, has and does play an important part in my life. If I’m wrong about religion I’ll have to reevaluate my entire understanding of how the world functions. So while I’m no more likely to convince a frum person that yiddishkeit is full of holes than I am likely to convince the acupuncturist that Chi doesn’t exist, religion pushes my buttons and acupuncture doesn’t. I critique divrei torah because religious inconsistencies and absurdities bug me. Chi is just good for a laugh when the acupuncturist is no longer there to be offended.

The Rasha

It is often said in the frum world that Judaism encourages questions. One is allowed, even encouraged to ask about religious practices. Of course in practice questions, or rather, questions without pat answers, are rarely tolerated.

Tomorrow night I will be at the Seder, an event the express purpose of which is to encourage children to ask questions. What kind of questions, though, are they supposed to be asking?

The section of the arbeh banim is enlightening on this point. For the purposes of this discussion I will focus on the first two of the four sons, the Chacham and the Rashsa. It is often said that they ask the same question: essentially, “Why are you doing all of this?” The difference is that the Chacham asks because he genuinely wants to know more about the practices, while the Rasha asks merely so that he can make fun of them.

If one looks at the actual text of the questions, however, the difference between the two is not the difference between the seeker of knowledge and the boor seeking to disparage the ritual, between “good” and “bad,” but rather the difference between two different premises. The Chacham asks, “What are the testimonies, decrees, and laws that God has commanded you?” He is starting from the premise that these actions were commanded by God, and is asking for clarification as to why God commanded these things and what, exactly, God has wants him to do. The Rasha asks a similar question, but one with an entirely different premise. He asks: “What is this work to you?” That is, why are you doing these things? What is the purpose? He starts from the premise that there is no apparent reason to be doing these strange things, and asks for justification for these actions.

The Chacham is praised as wise and, according to the commentaries, is taught all of the laws of Pesach through the end of the Seder, the eating of the Korban Pesach. The Rasha is disparaged as “depraved” (Artscroll translation) and we are encouraged to “Knock out his teeth.”

When the frum world claims that people are allowed to question Judaism, what is really meant is that people are allowed to ask for clarification on how to perform rituals, or, say, how to reconcile apparently conflicting passages in the Chumash. This is the question of the Chacham, which is allowed, and in the right context, even praiseworthy. The question of the Rasha, “Why do any of these things in the first place?” ”Why assume that conflicting passages are not really a “difficulty” and can always be reconciled?” is forbidden.

My own experiences have shown me that this is true. I was always a bit of a skeptic and questioned things that didn’t make sense. (I know, I know, we can’t say it doesn’t make sense. Things that I, with my puny brain, didn’t understand.) In seventh and eighth grade this was mostly gedolim stories that I found a bit ridiculous or unlikely. It wasn’t until tenth or eleventh grade, though, that I began to really ask questions. The response at first was attempts to answer each question individually. When my rabbeim noticed a pattern, the Rosh Yeshiva called me into his office and told me that while Judaism allows one to ask questions, and he would arrange for me to speak with people who could answer my questions, I shouldn’t ask about these things in class anymore. It was one thing if I had questions, but why should other bochurim, who would never think of such questions on their own, have to be bothered by mine? It was then arranged for me to meet with various members of the community who were active in kiruv. From them I heard all of the standard apologetics (though I didn’t think of them as such at the time, and even found some of them impressive. Oh well, I was sixteen.) I also heard that I was arrogant to assume that because I couldn’t understand something there was a problem with it; that many great rabonim had also struggled with these questions, were far smarter than I, and had remained great gedolim; versions of Pascal’s Wager; and so on ad nauseum.

Over time I came to identify more and more with the Rasha – not the Eisav version of the Rasha I learned about in kindergarten, the bully who killed people and used force and intimidation to achieve his ends – but the Hagadah version of the Rasha, the son who asks, “Why are we doing these strange things?” without assuming the answer automatically is, “Because God told us to.” The Rasha in many stories from the time of the Haskalah, in which the Enlightened intellectual would ask the Rov or Rebba a logical question about Judaism or a Jewish religious practice. The Rebba invariably gives a clever, glib answer that makes the maskil look like a fool but doesn’t really answer the question. The Chassidim or talmidim all laugh at the poor fool who thinks he knows better than the mesorah, and we move on, our crisis of faith averted. More and more, I found myself identifying with the maskil in these stories rather than with the Rov or the talmidim.

Eventually this became part of my self identity. I was the guy who questioned what everyone around me took for granted. I was the guy who engaged in heated debates with my rabbeim, my parents, my fellow bais medrish bochrim. I was the misfit, the one who thought he was right while everyone around me was convinced I was wrong. Oh, I knew that there were others out there who agreed with me. All those “evil” scientists, for instance. But these were not people I had ever met or spoken to.

Then, six or seven months ago, I discovered blogs. ( I don’t know why it took so long. I’ve been online for ten years.) Here were intelligent, articulate, like-minded people from backgrounds similar to mine. I was no longer unique.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while now. I’ve always liked to write. (In high school, it was my only available form of recreation.) A blog opens the possibility that someone will actually read what I write. The possibility of readers will hopefully also motivate me to write down a lot of things that I’ve been meaning to for years but just never got around to doing.

Dear potential readers, thank you in advance for the motivation, and please, play nice.